


How to Change a Way of Life

by afterandalasia



Series: Life Built on Snow and Ashes [3]
Category: DreamWorks Dragons (Cartoon), Frozen (2013), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Background Established Gobber the Belch/Stoick the Vast, Crossover, Dragon Riders, Elsa Has Ice Powers, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Historical, Interspecies Friendship, Languages, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Minor Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Astrid Hofferson, Minor Original Character(s), POV Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Paradigm Shifts, Plotty, Rehumanization, Snoggletog, Wildlings – Freeform, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-25 18:29:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 40
Words: 239,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6205909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This is Berk. It took us three hundred years to find one island, and we still haven't figured out tact. Now we're trying to keep up with dragons, get to grips with magic, and work out what to do with those who can't handle change. You could say that we're trying to find our feet - and some of us have a disadvantage in that area as well.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> <br/>After centuries of struggle, Hiccup has catapulted Berk into a whole new way of doing things - only now, he has to live up to it. Whether that means dealing with threats from outside the village, or from inside it, he suddenly finds himself having to step up in a way that he never could have expected.</p><p>There's a dragon sleeping in his room, and a woman with magical powers living in what used to be his workshop. From eking out an existence, he finds himself trying to carve out a life - for all of them. And with shadows of the past, near and far, reaching out, it turns out a harder path than he realised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashleybenlove](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ashleybenlove).



> What was originally meant to be a fic somehow turned into a series. To those joining me for the first time: welcome! To those who've read _How to Tame a Dragon's Fire_ : welcome back!
> 
> This fic draws from the TV seasons _Riders of Berk_ and _Defenders of Berk_ , and the short _Gift of the Night Fury_ , as well as bringing in original elements. Again, no knowledge of the series should be necessary to follow along. While I would recommend reading the first fic before this one, as these two in particular ran straight into each other in the first draft, it should stand well enough alone.
> 
> As of the beginning of posting, the third and fourth fics are partially drafted. I can promise completion of this WIP, and updates on a weekly (Sunday) schedule.
> 
> Some elements of the fic were inspired by _A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms_, and by BBC's _Merlin_. No canon knowledge of either of these will be necessary.
> 
> A note on shipping: Elsa & Hiccup is platonic only. Astrid/Hiccup is an endgame ship and begins to build, slowly, during this fic. Background Gobber/Stoick happened because I found myself shipping them despite being mostly a femslasher. More endgame ships can be seen on the [series page](http://archiveofourown.org/series/351317) \- but be warned, that way lie **spoilers**!

Despite what some people seemed to think, Hiccup had never actually promised that learning to live with dragons would go smoothly. The big things had come quickly, which perhaps was not as much of a surprise as he would have first thought. Within the first couple of moons they had figured out how to feed them, or they fact that Toothless would sometimes try to heat up the floor with his breath while still half asleep and almost set Hiccup’s room on fire. The latter, at least, would hopefully be addressed by the large sheet of slate from the edge of the Wildlands, retrieved by the dragon riders working together, which was now sitting outside waiting for them to work out how to get it into his room.

Compared to dragons, a wildling was easy. Or at least, Elsa was; he supposed that he had no idea what other wildlings would be like. She had quickly and quietly settled into place, which was often not all that far behind Hiccup and watching him carefully. It was a long way from what she had been when they met only a few moons previously, but he had changed a lot as well; from a scared injured girl of a wildling and the disappointment of the village, they had somehow tentatively found themselves much more _normal_ than Hiccup could have ever expected.

It was easier for Berk to accept Elsa, that much had quickly become clear as even those who looked warily at the dragons accepted her. Whether it was the fact that she was so clearly human, her soft speech and careful movements, or the fact that the only time they had seen her use magic was in defence of them – then complete strangers – against the Red Death, it was clearly enough. At home, as well, it was much easier to accommodate another person than it was to figure out how to fit in a dragon; a curtain over the workshop door and some planks fastened together for a bed seemed to be more than enough for her. Hiccup quickly got used to being able to see the shift in Elsa’s posture or the glitter of fear in her eyes, and anticipating the strikes of fear and withdrawal that would follow them.

He might not understand it all, not yet, but he knew that he could at least anticipate her fears. And he hoped that helped at least somewhat.

What he could not do, however, was anticipate that something as innocuous as Gobber bringing out dinner and starting to serve it up would send Toothless bounding across the room.

With a hiss, Toothless ran halfway up the stairs, paused to growl in the direction of the table, and then leapt across all of their heads to perch on one of the beams. His lashing tail knocked a shield off the wall, and as he jumped down a chair and a footstool followed it over. He thumped across the ground with his forelimbs, wings flaring and furling again.

“Stop that!” said Stoick, at the same time as Hiccup said, “What is it, Toothless?”

Toothless shrieked, a sound rather too loud for inside a house, and then narrowed his eyes and growled at the table. His teeth were fully extended, back arched.

“What’s gotten into you, then?” said Gobber. “You’ve had your supper, now let us have some eel stew in piece.”

“Eel stew?” Hiccup leaned over to look into Elsa’s bowl, filled where his own still stood empty. She leaned back out of the way. It was hard to tell what the fish in it was, but he supposed that it could look like eel. Turning round on the bench, he reached for his cane. “Yeah, that explains it. It’s all right, bud, it’s not going to hurt you. It’s already dead.”

“Would anyone mind telling me what is going on?” His father was already sounding frustrated.

Luckily, Elsa replied, while Hiccup was still trying to edge towards Toothless with his hand outstretched. “Dragons do not like eels.”

“And I don’t like baths,” said Gobber, “but I don’t go wrecking the house over them.”

If it had been any other time, Hiccup might have argued with that, but now he was more concerned with getting over to Toothless. The dragon shook his head, shrieked again, and for a moment Hiccup saw green at the back of his throat. All right, this had gone markedly downhill. “I think we should go outside for a bit,” he said. “Come on, bud.”

“Oh, no, you are not going out in that snow,” said Stoick.

“I’m not sending him outside on his own!” Hiccup protested. He lunged across to throw an arm around Toothless’s neck, and though Toothless squirmed and rumbled warningly he did not pull away. “Dragons just don’t like eels! It’s not his fault!”

Another lash of Toothless’s tail sent the chair across the floor and whipped against the wall, knocking the wooden ducks off the shelf upon it. Hiccup fought to keep himself upright while simultaneously keeping an arm around Toothless.

Stoick looked around the scene, and then sighed heavily. Getting to his feet, he dumped his bowl of stew back into the pot, then picked up the bowl in one hand and the pot in the other. “Come on, then, Elsa,” he said. “Looks like we’re eating outside tonight.”

“Dad, I didn’t mean–” Hiccup started, but as Stoick walked towards the door Toothless gave another cry and bounded halfway up the stairs in one go. Hiccup grabbed at the overturned chair to keep himself upright, cursing the Red Death all over again, but by the time that he had managed to get himself standing straight again the door was closing behind them.

It couldn’t be considered a _snowstorm_ outside, at least not by Berk’s standards. Arendelle might disagree on the matter. But it was certainly snowing, winter preparing to really settle in now.

“Thor’s goats,” grumbled Hiccup. He looked round to Toothless, now crouching on the stairs with his plates right back and tail still whipping from side to side. “Are you pleased with yourself?”

Gobber ambled over, righted the chair and footstool, and set about picking the ducks off the floor. “Well, that’s one thing to remember,” he said. “No eel stew from now on.”

“Sorry,” Hiccup said. “I didn’t realise...”

“And I didn’t tell you,” Gobber replied, shrugging. “Oh, well, I’m sure it’ll do just as well for lunch tomorrow while you’re off flying.”

He glanced over to the door. “Should I...”

“No, leave them to it. Elsa doesn’t mind the cold, does she?” When Hiccup shook his head, Gobber gave him a heavy pat on the shoulder. “Well, there you go. Your father won’t mind, trust me.”

“It’s freezing out.”

Gobber gave a fond, slightly sad smile. “Aye, but your father loves the snow. Won’t admit it, of course,” he added, picking up the shield to put it back onto its mount, “but he’d gladly watch every snowfall, if he could.”

Sitting down on the stairs, Hiccup gestured for Toothless to come down and join him. The dragon rumbled in a manner that Hiccup could only describe as petulant, but when Hiccup patted the step beside him again he gave a rumble and slunk back down. “There we go. You... really mean that?” he said to Gobber.

“Oh, yes.” Gobber paused for a moment, and chuckled. “The winter before you were born, I caught him and your mother out early one morning making snow angels. Made me swear not to tell anyone.”

The image of his father in the snow, flopping around like a landed fish, was enough to make Hiccup start laughing. He just wished that he could picture his mother there as well, to complete the image. “Shouldn’t that mean not telling me, as well?”

“Bah, you were there.”

Toothless nudged against Hiccup’s shoulder, and with a roll of his eyes Hiccup reached to scratch him under the chin. He hadn’t meant anything by it, Hiccup was sure, had just jumped away from the eels. Hiccup only wished that he knew _why_. Though he could say the same thing of his father often enough. There was still a lot about Stoick that he didn’t understand. “I wish I remembered her,” he said, more quietly. Gobber stopped his tidying up and looked round, the firelight putting deep shadows under his eyes. “Or that Dad talked about her more. Or... something.”

“I wish he would too,” said Gobber. “Your mother was a fine woman, and she and I were good friends.” He crossed over to Hiccup and sat down heavily beside him on the stairs, wood creaking under the combined weight of two Vikings and a dragon. “I think he’s just trying to... bottle all of those memories up, so he doesn’t lose them.”

Like the one carved bust that Hiccup had found, along with the journals. In some places the edges were still rough, unfinished, but the face and hair had been worn smooth from innumerable touches. “I suppose.”

Gobber but his arm around Hiccup and squeezed him tightly. A little more tightly than was comfortable, if truth be told, but he appreciated the sentiment. “We’ve managed to keep the house together this far, haven’t we, hmm? You, me, him, a dragon and a wildling. I don’t think there’s any of us would have predicted that.”

He had a point. “We do make for a strange household,” Hiccup admitted. He tried to scratch the middle of his back, where it was hardest to reach and which therefore always managed to be the point that itched. His nails were dirty when he drew them out again. “Yuck. Gods, I need a bath.” It would make a nice change from strip-washes, always conducted fast against the cold and his still questionable balance.

“Really?” Gobber leant in and gave an exaggerated sniff. “You’re right, you definitely do.”

“Oh, sure, I’m the one to talk.” Hiccup pretended to wave away Gobber’s armpit.

“I haven’t been dunking myself in the sea on an irregular basis,” said Gobber.

There wasn’t really an argument for that either, and Hiccup settled for trying to look unimpressed. It probably didn’t work too well. “You reckon the ice on the well should still be breakable?”

“Drop a good stone down, sure,” said Gobber. “Or you could have one of the dragons blast it, nowadays.”

“There’s a point,” he said, nudging Toothless with his shoulder. “Get to make yourself useful, huh?” Since the Red Death he had only been stripping and washing, being careful around the developing scar around his stump. A thought occurred, and Hiccup felt his cheeks heat up. “Though, uh, there is _one_ issue.”

“I’m sure the well can handle a good blast. We only dug it the summer before last, after all.”

“No...” Hiccup pointed to the door. “I meant Elsa.” Having a bath in front of the fire had been no problem at all when it had been just the three of them, aside from Gobber’s jokes about using the bathwater for the following day’s stew. “I can’t exactly...” he gestured down at himself. If his father didn’t like the idea of them being asleep in the same room, he didn’t want to think what would be made of Hiccup being naked in the same room as Elsa. “Maybe I should ask Astrid to take care of her for a couple of hours.”

“Take care of her?” Gobber raised an eyebrow and snorted. “You are just like your father sometimes.”

“Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a difference of about eighteen inches, three hundred pounds and an enormous beard,” replied Hiccup. He raised his left leg. “And a foot, nowadays.”

“Protecting your own,” said Gobber, giving him a hard enough push to rock him back where he sat.

All that Hiccup could manage was an indignant splutter. “She’s not _mine_ , I’ve told you that!” he said. “And it’s not as if I’m _parenting_ her.”

“Aye, sure you’re not,” said Gobber, standing up again with one final ruffle of Hiccup’s hair. “Now, let’s get you and me some dinner, if eel stew’s off the menu.”

Hiccup looked at Toothless, who was now the very picture of innocence again. “Yeah, that sounds like a plan. And I’ll get Astrid to do... whatever it is girls do when they spend time together.”

“Can I get a good seat for when you say that to her face?” called Gobber. There was a clattering from the pantry.

Hiccup leant around the edge of the bannister. “What _do_ girls do when they spend time together?” Gobber leaned backwards out of the pantry to give him a singularly unimpressed expression. “What? How am I supposed to know?”

“For that matter, how am I supposed to know?” said Gobber. “If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been living in a house full of men as long as you have. Probably braid each other’s hair or something.”

Hiccup decided against pointing out how much time Gobber spent keeping his moustache properly combed and braided, or for that matter how much effort Stoick’s beard took to maintain. Instead he leaned back on the stairs, his head coming to rest next to one of Toothless’s feet. “I’ll just ask for a report when she gets back.”

At which point, Toothless decided that now would be an excellent opportunity to lick Hiccup’s face.

“Aw, bud, come on!” he tried to roll away, but Toothless stepped sideways to keep him in place and continued to drool on him. Hiccup slithered down a few steps instead and sat up, rubbing Night Fury spit off his face with his sleeve once again. At least he didn’t have to rinse out his sleeves before returning home for fear that his father or Gobber would catch the strange smell on him. “Thank you. You’re really in fine form tonight, aren’t you?”

 

 

 

 

 

He didn’t ask, in the end, what Astrid had planned for the two hours or so that she said she was going to borrow Elsa for. Mostly because Astrid would probably punch him if he so much as asked, and partially because whether she punched him or not, he doubted that he was going to get an answer. Instead, he tried to figure out how to get Toothless to carry buckets of water without spilling it, failed, and was relegated to waiting inside while Gobber hauled in the buckets instead, muttering about it along the way.

A few inches of warm water felt like luxury compared to a basin that was usually barely above freezing. Even if he did have to put up with Gobber’s repeated suggestions on how carefully he should wash his wound.

“I have been doing this for over a moon now, Gobber!” he said finally, waving a less-than-threatening sponge. Toothless sniffed at it, then tried to lick Hiccup’s arm. “Quit it.”

“And I’ve been doing it for three decades,” Gobber replied. His return wave of a knife looked somewhat more impressive. “And you’ve got to be _careful_.”

“For Thor’s sake, both of you,” said Stoick, appearing out of the main bedroom with a half-carved wooden duck in one hand. “Can you not cut it out?”

Hiccup leant his chin on the edge of the tub and frowned, hair dripping into his eyes, then straightened up to stop Toothless from trying to splash in the tub for what felt like about the twentieth time. Probably a better idea than Gobber’s mutter about Stoick now knowing how Gobber felt, which made Stoick glower in his direction. Instead he dumped a pitcher of water over his head and then pushed his hair back out of the way again.

The door slammed open, and he almost jumped clean out the tub. “Chief!” Elsa shouted. “Astrid needs you!”

Hiccup thought about standing up, thought better of it, and tried to grab at the towel warming in front of the fire instead. Sadly, it was just out of his reach, and for want of any other options he clung to the edge of the tub and tried not to look too naked.

“What’s going on?” said Stoick, bolting to his feet. Elsa was panting for breath, clinging to the edge of the door.

“Stormfly,” said Elsa. When Stoick looked blank, she tried, “The Nadder. Astrid needs you. You too, Hiccup.”

They had been through this before, Astrid with an axe in her hand standing in front of Stormfly. But the worst of the troublemakers should have been gone by now. “Go, Dad,” said Hiccup, waving to the door. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Elsa bolted from the doorway, and Stoick hurried after her. Hiccup gave up on the towel and grabbed for the table on the other side instead, using it for leverage to haul himself upright. His clothes were pooled on the table itself, and he started pulling them on without even waiting to dry himself off. He was getting better at standing on one leg to put on his foot as well, even if he wasn’t really supposed to do that.

“Are you _planning_ to freeze solid?” said Gobber disapprovingly.

“Elsa just came _running_ over, by _herself_ , because _Astrid_ sent her for help.” Any part of that would have had him hurrying out, but all three together was making his heart pound in his chest and his fingers shake as he did up his belt. He shook his hair, sending water everywhere, and grabbed his cane. “Sorry, Gobber! I’ll mop up later!”

Gobber made a sound of disbelief, and Hiccup managed to get the door open far enough for Toothless to help push it the rest of the way. That he could hear shouting already was a bad sign. His breath misted on the air, and his clothes stuck to his skin, already miserably cold, but the fact that his father’s voice had joined the shouting meant that people had not just shut up as soon as Stoick arrived.

Definitely a bad sign.

“What’s going on?” he did his best to bark as he reached the knot of people around Astrid’s house. His father’s helmet was visible in the middle of the throng, but there were perhaps a dozen people altogether, and he heard the ring of metal on metal from the centre. He slammed the butt of his cane against the ground, and Toothless shrieked. Finally, people fell quiet. “ _What_ is happening?”

They broke apart, though whether it was for him or Toothless he wasn’t sure that he even wanted to know. His father was physically restraining Astrid, who squirmed and struggled in his arms even though she had been lifted bodily off the ground. A bruise was starting to appear on her right cheek. Opposite her, being held up by Mudbreath, was Mildew. Blood was pouring from his nose and matting in his beard, and he clung to his staff as Astrid fought to get to him.

“You try to hurt my dragon again, you half-troll–” Astrid snarled.

“Whoa!” Hiccup quickly placed himself between them, side on so that he could keep an eye on both. “What in Hel’s name happened around here?”

“This gutless piece of–”

“I come looking for my Canker and the next thing I know I find–”

The smell of blood caught his attention. Stepping past Astrid and his father, Hiccup found himself looking at the remains of a sheep just outside the woodshed where Stormfly slept. Even that much, he could only tell from the remains of the white fleece; its guts were spilling on the snow, splintered bones poking through. He took a step back again, raising his free hand to cover his mouth.

“Odin help us,” he muttered. Turning back, he looked between Mildew and Astrid, the latter of whom was slowly being lowered to the ground by Stoick. “Oh, come on. You can’t seriously think...”

“Look at the beast!” Declared Mildew, the words thickened by the blood from his nose but still clear enough. He pointed at Stormfly with his staff, and Astrid tried to lunge for him again.

With a sense of dread, Hiccup stepped further across, and Astrid’s father stepped back out of the way to reveal Stormfly. She was in the woodshed, tail curved defensively above her back with the spines flared, bleeding from one wing. For a moment, he thought that the blood around her mouth would be from the same injury, then it hit him like a blow to the gut.

Shaking his head, he turned back to his father. “Dad, there’s no way that–”

“See!” said Mildew. “The boy leaps straight to the creatures’ defence!”

“You’ll speak more politely in my son’s presence,” replied Stoick, but he was still scowling and Hiccup suspected it was not just at Mildew. “And you’ve been told before not to call him a boy.”

Mildew blustered for a second before he managed to find his tongue again. “It killed my Canker,” he said finally. “My poor Canker, she never hurt anyone, I just kept her for the wool and milk and lambing and now it’s killed her. What am I to do for the winter?”

“They eat _fish_!” said Hiccup angrily.

“Accuse my dragon again,” Astrid was fighting to get out of Stoick’s grip again, banging her hands against his, and Hiccup saw his father wince at the blows. “And I’ll take that staff and–”

“Enough!” said Stoick. There was fury in his tone the likes of which that Hiccup had never heard before, and everyone fell silent. Even Astrid, breathless and red-faced, fell still, and he finished lowering her to the ground where her father hurried forwards to take her arm and pull her away. “Mildew, you will be paid recompense for your sheep. We’ve not yet done the winter slaughter. _Not a word, Hiccup_. In future, don’t leave them grazing unattended.”

Mildew looked disbelieving. “You’re blaming _me_ for the actions of that creature?”

“No, I’m saying that you shouldn’t leave your sheep grazing alone, peace with the dragons or no. If it had been a wolf that had taken one, we wouldn’t be able to have this discussion. Now go home, and tend to that nose of yours. I want no more fighting in the streets. Carr,” he added, to Astrid’s father, “if you and Astrid could come with me. Runa, stay with the Nadder please.”

His tone broached no argument. Mr. Hofferson steered Astrid after Stoick; Hiccup tried at first to fall in beside her and catch her eye, but she gave him such a dark look that he fell back. He looked around to see that, with the crowd dispersing, Elsa was standing over the sheep and frowning. As he watched, she knelt down and reached out as if she was going to touch one of the wounds.

“All right,” he said, walking over as quickly as he could. “We’d better go as well, Elsa.”

She looked round at her name, then straightened up again. “This is not right,” she said quietly.

“Tell me about it,” said Hiccup. “Dragons will eat mutton, sure, but they go for fish first. Stormfly’s hunting by herself again in the evenings, with the others now that they’ve figured it out.”

And why would she fly all the way out to Mildew’s farm just for a sheep? There were other farms closer to town, besides the people on the edges who kept a sheep or goat or two just in the clearings near to their houses. By the time that Stormfly had flown out to Mildew’s, she might as well have gone for a boar or a deer in the woods.

The fact that Mildew had been stupid enough to leave his animals unattended... well, Hiccup could just about believe that.

“Come on, we should get back,” he said, nodding after his father and the others. Stoick had all but marched off, and Astrid and her father were matching him for pace.

“Hiccup,” said Elsa sharply. She grabbed hold of his arm, and he almost did a double-take that she had been the one to initiate the contact. Her eyes bored into him. “There are knife-cuts in the flesh.”

He frowned. “Now that, my Dad definitely needs to hear.” He hurried after the others, Elsa alongside him, but even so by the time that he reached the house there was shouting coming from inside again, Astrid’s angry pouring out and his father speaking loudly and firmly over the top of it.

“If that old craven thinks he can blame Stormfly–”

“Astrid, think before you speak–”

“Does he think that I wouldn’t have _heard_ her taking off? My room is right _beside_ –”

Elsa opened the door, and Hiccup slipped in. His bath still stood beside the fire, water all over the floor, Gobber looking unimpressed at the chiefly drama which had just spilled into the room. Astrid was standing right in front of Stoick, unabashedly shouting into his face and gesturing with one hand as if she was still holding an axe. Stoick looked thunderous.

“You can’t be making accusations like this–”

Before it could get worse, Hiccup stepped between them and put a hand on Astrid’s chest to push her back a step. She looked too surprised to fight him. “Dad, she’s right. It wouldn’t even make sense for Stormfly to go after a sheep.”

“I don’t pretend to know the reasoning of dragons,” said Stoick, with just enough of an inflection to suggest that Hiccup shouldn’t either. But this was not pretending.

“Toothless hardly wanted to eat mutton when I gave it to him. Why would Stormfly bother hunting?” He took a deep breath, meeting Elsa’s eyes for a fraction of a second. “Besides. There were knife-marks in the sheep.”

He heard Astrid’s angry drawing-in of breath. “That _trollson_ ,” she spat. “He dumps the meat in front of–”

“Silence!” snapped Stoick, making them all jump. “Hiccup, what are you suggesting? That Mildew killed his own sheep, right before the winter set in? Or that someone else killed it and happened to leave the carcass by the dragon?”

“Not happened to,” said Hiccup. “Whoever did it, did it because they don’t like the dragons, don’t you see? You know there are people who want them gone. You wouldn’t let them, so now they want an excuse.”

“Hiccup. What makes more sense?” said Stoick, looking more disappointed than angry now. He rubbed his forehead. “That the dragon got hungry and went looking for an unwatched sheep, or that Mildew killed one of his own and hauled the carcass all the way into town just in the hope of framing a dragon? And without being seen, no less.”

It would have sounded like the simplest choice in the world, just a few moons ago. But having seen what goodness was in dragon nature, and knowing what could be in human, Hiccup was far from convinced. “I don’t believe Stormfly did this.”

“I know you don’t want to,” Stoick said, a little more gently. “But I don’t see a simpler explanation. I’m sure it was a slip, nothing more, but I can’t ignore it. Carr, would you be willing to put a door on that woodshed?”

Carr nodded slowly. “I could get that done in a day or two.”

This time, it was Hiccup’s turn to look horrified. “What? Stormfly was locked in a _cell_ for three years, you can’t lock her up again! Her pen in the arena didn’t even have _light_!” And in that, it was worse than the jail cells. Hiccup could speak to that, nowadays.

Stoick silenced him with a wave of his hand. “Enough, Hiccup. I’ve got to keep the peace, and we can’t risk losing more livestock this close to the winter. Help Carr put in windows, if that makes you feel better. And if we’re lucky, no one will take notice of the fact that we’re putting a dragon in a wooden shed.”

“No,” said Astrid, so quietly that Hiccup barely heard it. She was shaking with anger, her teeth gritted, and she glared at Stoick as she shook her head. All in an instant, she stormed from the house too fast for her father or Hiccup’s to stop her, and left the door hanging open in her wake. Hiccup saw her burst into a run as she got outside.

For a moment, nobody seemed quite sure of what to do, then Hiccup sighed. “I’ll go after her,” he said. “I know... dragons.”

He also knew Astrid, at least to an extent. There was a grove of trees not far from the edge of town which was impressively scarred from the abuse which Astrid gave it. She would be heading to her house first, to pick up an axe or two, and then out to the trees. Provided that she didn’t do something stupid like take Stormfly. Frowning at the thought, Hiccup picked up the pace as he slipped from the house and turned straight in the direction of the grove.

He did not expect Elsa to appear beside him. It was starting to rain, a steady light fall for now, and Hiccup supposed that at least it made it a moot point that he had not dried off after his bath. She did not ask where they were going, just followed him, arms wrapped around herself.

Hiccup squinted at her in the dim evening. “Is... your hair different?”

In the time that he had known her, she had only ever worn it one way: a simple braid, tied at the bottom with grass at first or with a strip of leather more recently. Now the braid was thick and complicated, and a few stray curls were alongside her cheeks. Elsa reached up to touch her hair as if she had forgotten all about it. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Astrid did it for me.”

Huh. Apparently Gobber was right.

“Then she showed me how to throw an axe.”

“Of course she did.”

 

 

 

 

 

Astrid had still made it to the clearing first, to judge by her angry screams and the sound of splintering bark. Even the trees on the island had to be sturdy. With a cautious look around a trunk, Hiccup waited until Astrid was retrieving one of her axes to step out, in the hopes of not making himself too much of a target.

“So, which one’s Mildew?” he said, looking at the battered trees. It was raining more heavily now, though if he stayed under the branches it kept the worst of it off. Astrid was already soaking wet, hair slapping against her face. Her hair, too, looked different than usual.

Astrid yanked her axe out of the tree again. “All of them,” she snarled.

“Good to know.” He surveyed the damage, and waited for her anger to find coherent words.

It didn’t take too long. Astrid backtracked to the middle of the small clearing, picked her target, and hurled the axe overarm to bite into the wood. “That son of a sow!” she shouted abruptly, voice ringing on the trees. “Just because he misses his glory days of hunting dragons, he thinks he can take it out on us. He just can’t admit that he was _wrong_.”

In light of the fact that she had to put her foot against the tree to get her axe free again, Hiccup chose not to point out that Astrid had needed to be talked around – and, he supposed, flown around – as well. “Well, maybe we just need more time. It’s not been much more than a moon, after all.”

“Everyone else sees it. They’re _glad_ that the deaths are over.” Another overarm throw, another tree with the axe sticking out of its trunk. “But no, he tries to get rid of them. Get rid of _my_ dragon,” she emphasised, as she wrenched her axe free.

At any other time, he would have paused to think about what her protective, possessive behaviour and words meant in terms of how far she had come. Now was probably not the time, however. “If he did this, we’ll prove it,” said Hiccup. “We won’t let him take the dragons away.”

Astrid paused, shaking her head, then with another scream lashed out with the axe hard enough to take a bough clean off the tree. Elsa ducked away automatically; Hiccup stood still. He knew that Astrid only hit things that she wanted hit. It didn’t look like his reassurances were working too well to calm her down, however; he tried a different angle.

“Did Elsa do your hair?”

Looking bewildered, Astrid fell still and stared at him. The rain continued to become harder, and icy cold as well.

Hiccup gestured to the braid down her back. “It looks different. Did Elsa do that?”

“Yes?” said Astrid. Well, at least she wasn’t using her axe on the surroundings any more, even if she was looking at Hiccup as if he was talking complete nonsense.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure what to say beyond that. His own hair refused to grow long enough to really do anything with. “It looks good,” he went for.

Whether Elsa’s laughter was at his words, or at Astrid’s continuing look of confusion, he could not even say. He just grinned foolishly, and Astrid finally set the head of her axe to the ground and started laughing as well, brow still furrowed until she reached up to run one hand over her eyes. “Hiccup,” she said finally. “Don’t change. Gods help me, don’t change.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaand welcome to the Sunday posting schedule!

It soon became apparent that Hiccup was the one to be called out whenever there was anything wrong with the dragons. He did not point out that Gobber had more experience with dragons in general that he did, and instead obediently answered when Belch ate something that did not agree with him and spent the night throwing up, Barf looking unimpressed at Hiccup the whole time. Upon hearing that Hookfang was on the roof and refusing to get down, Hiccup just rolled his eyes, grabbed his cane, and went to find out what was going on.

Unsurprisingly, a Monstrous Nightmare sitting on the Jorgensens’ roof and roaring to the sky had drawn onlookers. They didn’t seem hostile, though. Hiccup looked around and sighed. “Has anyone got a ladder?”

Snotlout was standing in front of the house, trying not to look too desperate. “Hookfang, get down here!” he said, pointing at the ground beside him. Hookfang responded by looking down and huffing smoke. “This is _not funny_.”

“How long has he been up there?” said Hiccup to Astrid.

She shrugged. “Long enough for us to come and fetch you.”

“Point.” He had to admit that the others were generally able to look after their dragons by themselves. It was surprisingly easy, a lot of time – feed them, give them somewhere to sleep, and he supposed that it was just so much better than the pens in the arena that it was enough. “Snotlout,” he called, a little more loudly, “go grab a ladder.”

“Stupid stubborn dragon,” grumbled Snotlout, but it didn’t have his usual venom. He vanished round the back of the house.

Hiccup patted Toothless absently on the head, then looked round to see the Night Fury pad over to the great metal dish in the road. It had been one of the fire-dishes that they used to make the torches during dragon attacks, but with nearly two moons behind them people were believing more and more that it was, finally, over. Enough for them to bring down one of the torches for good, and have everyone throw their spare fish into it for the dragons to eat. Cutting down on fish-heads and feeding the dragons in the same stroke; Hiccup was a little bit pleased with himself for that.

Toothless put his front paws on the edge of the dish, nosing around in the bits and pieces of fish in there, then reared back with a hiss, wings flaring.

“Whoa!” said Hiccup, hurrying over as Toothless starting backing away from the dish with a warning rumble. “Not you as well! What’s up, bud?”

Snorting, Toothless continued to back away from the dish, then thumped on the ground with his front paws again. Glancing round to Astrid, who shrugged, Hiccup tried to reach out and cup Toothless’s jaw to calm him down. Huge green eyes fixed on him for a moment, pupils relaxing, then Toothless huffed again and kept backing up.

“Hey, Snotlout?” called Hiccup, as the younger boy came back into view with a ladder on his shoulder. “Was Hookfang at the feeding station before he climbed on your roof?”

“Yes, he was just having breakfast.” Snotlout’s voice trembled very slightly, and Hiccup felt a pang of sympathy. _Fear_ , his father had said. Something that apparently even Snotlout could be aware of.

Hiccup looked back to the dish full of fish guts and sighed. He had a suspicion that he was going to end up smelling like a fish barrel again. Crossing to it, he got a good stance and set aside his cane, rolling up both sleeves and trying not to think too hard about what he was about to do.

It wasn’t an easy task. Some people were giving up fish because they were coming round to the dragons, but plenty were just seeing the advantage in having some way of using up fish that were too small, did not look healthy, or were just pout and dogfish that nobody wanted to eat anyway. The result was a sort of fishy morass that didn’t much help the smell around Berk, but was bearable for the winter at least.

“I hope you appreciate this,” he muttered, with a glance to Hookfang.

He started to pick through the fish, delicately at first then, realising that his hands were already covered in guts, more quickly. Finally his hand wrapped around something familiar, and he pulled it out to reveal a red-and-black striped eel, pretty much whole.

“Well, there’s your problem,” he said, turning back to the others again. He went to pick up his cane, but didn’t really want to with his hands this dirty. “Anybody got a bucket of water?”

“I cannot believe you just did that,” said Astrid, walking over but keeping a safe distance between them. Well, possibly between herself and the eel instead. At some point, the skin had split, and it was oozing a bit. To be honest, Hiccup would not have blamed the dragons for not wanting to eat any fish that looked like that, but apparently they would eat this and worse as long as it were not an eel.

He tried to smile, but it felt a bit weird to be doing so whilst holding an eel at arm’s length. “Is this really the strangest thing that you’ve seen me do?”

Astrid folded her arms. “Sadly, no.”

He was saved from embarrassing himself further by the appearance of Snotlout, now holding a bucket out almost beseechingly. “Will this help him?” said Snotlout. “He was just eating and then he suddenly climbed on the roof and he was breathing fire and–”

“It’s all right, Snotlout,” said Hiccup, gladly dropping the eel. “They just don’t like eels. We should probably spread that about a bit, actually, make sure nobody puts another one in there. Just... get rid of this somewhere away from the dragons.” For the first time in the little show, he turned to face those watching, most of whom immediately to look as if they were talking to each other rather than watching Hiccup wrangle three tonnes of frightened dragon. “If you want to stop this happening again,” he said firmly, “then don’t put eels in the feeding station.” To Astrid, he added; “I hope I don’t have to get my father to make that a village rule.”

His hands were disgusting. He scraped off the worst of the fish guts against the edge of the feeding station, which Toothless was now cautiously approaching again, but couldn’t bring himself to grab his cane or wipe them off on his shirt. Well, he’d already left the crutches behind far more quickly than he was supposed to.

“Let’s head to the well,” he said firmly. It wasn’t too far from the Jorgensens’. “Could you...” he nodded to the cane.

“Sure,” said Astrid. She twirled it round her hand and tucked it up onto her shoulder as Hiccup took a deep breath and a step.

It wasn’t that bad. He still felt uneven, as if he was walking with one foot on a step and the other on the ground, but as long as he took quite small steps he could manage. He took a second, then a third to be sure, and smiled. A glance over his shoulder told him that Toothless now had his nose in the feeding station, and that Hookfang had come down from the roof to butt his head against Snotlout hard enough to send the boy stumbling backwards.

This was manageable. He held his arms stiffly to his side as he made his way to the well, Astrid dawdling beside him. “Looks like eels might need to be filtered out down at the wharves,” she said.

“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Maybe Brynnhild can talk to them about that.” Spitelout was a warrior through and through, one of the council and Stoick’s right-hand man, but his wife came from a fishing family and still preferred to be on the water. “Snotlout says that she’s coming round to Hookfang.”

Only Toothless and Meatlug were really small enough to get into the houses. Barf and Belch were apparently content enough to sleep outside, behind the house, and Stormfly had her woodshed – with the flimsiest of wooden-slatted doors which had made Hiccup smile. It was clear that Carr didn’t think much of locking up the Nadder either. Hookfang wanted to get into the house, to hear Snotlout talk about how often he stuck his head in through the windows or doors, but Snotlout was still trying to persuade his parents to put in a large enough door to his bedroom. But apparently Hookfang was making a good impression all around.

“Now that the dragons aren’t stealing so much fish, yes,” said Astrid dryly. Brynnhild had always been angered that the dragons undid her work, on top of the other grievances she held against them.

“Maybe everyone has to find their own reason to trust the dragons,” he replied. Every little step was helpful. Not just in the literal sense. “I mean, Spitelout’s got this idea that we can fight with them.”

“That could be a good idea, you know.” Astrid spun the cane around in her hand again. “I mean, you and Toothless took down the Red Death. If we could get all five dragons fighting, then we’d be better protected if the Outcasts came, or the Bog Burglars, or the Barbarous Isle...”

The thought was painful. Hiccup didn’t want to release the dragons from the arena just to make them fight again. “They’re not weapons,” he said, as they reached the well and Astrid went to work the handle without him having to ask. “We can’t just _use_ them.”

“You and I aren’t weapons either, but we got trained to fight.” As the bucket reached the top, Astrid hauled it onto the edge and Hiccup set about washing the fish guts off. “Well, I mean, the others and I did. I guess you just picked it up as you went along.”

“It’s amazing what happens when you actually listen.”

He didn’t mean for it to come out quite as acerbically as it had, but luckily Astrid snorted. “Try telling the twins that sometime. But Hiccup, the dragons _wanted_ to help. Hookfang came back to help you against the Red Death, and we hadn’t even named them then.”

It was fair and unfair at the same time. Fair that they treated the dragons in the same way as they would any member of the tribe, expecting them to be able to defend themselves. But unfair that they had been fighting all their lives already, and now would be expected to go against swords and shields again. And Hiccup wouldn’t even be able to explain to them what was happening. “I don’t want them sent to attack people,” he said. “Or used against wildlings. Hel, we need to think about wildlings in a new way, if Arendelle...”

He trailed off. Astrid had not heard that part of Elsa’s story, and was now frowning at him. Shaking water off his hands, he stepped back.

“Never mind. But I just... I don’t know if this is the right thing.”

“It is sort of teaching them to defend themselves, as well.”

If there was an attack, Hiccup knew, Toothless would not want to leave his side. In all likelihood, the other dragons would not want to leave their riders either. Already, he could see the loyalties forming, deep enough to change the world. “All right,” he said. “I’ll... talk to my father about it. But I don’t want it to be all... gung-ho.”

“We’re not going to hurt our dragons,” said Astrid, looking vaguely horrified.

“What? No! I wasn’t suggesting that! Just that...” he wasn’t sure how he could say it. The scars on Stormfly’s flanks and neck from where she had taken blows. The Terror’s slashed wings. Meatlug’s lost eggs. So many things that they had taken from the dragons already, and now they wanted to take away their peace as well. “To let them protect themselves,” he said. “We can do that.”

 

 

 

 

 

He was somewhat surprised when his father agreed. “It’s a fair point,” mused Stoick, looking at Toothless where the dragon was currently perching on one of the beams and watching the goings-on below. “Having the dragons might stop people from wanting to attack us at all. Keep us safer that way.”

It took strength of will for Hiccup not to slam his hands – or his head – against the table. “I don’t want to make them into _weapons_ , Dad,” he said, for what felt like the hundredth time. It seemed like everyone to whom he spoke jumped straight to the idea of dragons as creatures of war – not even like horses, but like catapults or ballistae to be rolled out to meet the enemy.

“I know,” Stoick said, though Hiccup was still not sure that he was getting it. “Just training them. An academy, if you will.”

Hiccup took a deep breath and forced himself to think of this as progress. “Yes. A... dragon academy.”

“And where were you planning on doing this?”

 _Planning_ was really a bit of an exaggeration considering the fact that Astrid and Hiccup had come up with the idea that morning. Hiccup’s mouth opened and closed a few times as he fumbled for an answer, but his father interrupted him again.

“Oh, what am I thinking? You can carry on over in the arena like you have been doing.”

He blinked. “Pardon?”

“The arena,” said Stoick. “You’ve been over there half the time anyway, even in the snow. How are you coping with that?”

“Oh, we cleaned out Hook– the Monstrous Nightmare’s pen,” said Hiccup. His father was still struggling with the idea of naming dragons, let alone remembering what those names were. “It’s large enough for all of us.”

“And you... talk about dragons?” continued his father, sounding a little more uncertain.

This, at least, Hiccup could talk about. He perked up a little, sitting up straighter in his seat. “Oh, yes, lots about dragons. The others are still finding out things about their species, and Fishlegs and I are trying to work out how to arrange it all in the new Book. Quite often we go out flying, though.”

Stoick nodded. “I heard some of the men saying that they’d seen you all out.”

The first time that it had happened, it had turned out, some people had been on the verge of running for the catapults before realising that there was a Night Fury among them, which meant that it was Hiccup and the others. Getting shot down once was enough for Hiccup. “So... we can keep using the arena? I mean, we’re not using it any more...”

“You could change the name,” announced Gobber. He threw a fish-head in the direction of Toothless, who caught it mid-air and gulped it down with a contented chuff.

“And the doors,” said Elsa. She was mending a skirt which she had ripped a few days ago, with very small neat stitches that had surprised all three of them. Hiccup could work leather well enough, and do basic mending of rips in fabric, but Elsa’s sewing was almost delicate, the last thing that he could have expected from a wildling. “They are...” she paused, frowning.

Hiccup wasn’t sure that there was a word for what the doors were at the moment. “Yes,” he said. “The doors as well. They don’t need to be like that any more.”

“And I suppose you’ll be needing some blacksmithing for that,” said Gobber.

Hiccup gave his most winning smile, and Gobber just rolled his eyes. “Well, if you’re too busy then I suppose we could just try it ourselves, right Elsa? Of course, we might be better at destroying the doors than at fixing the again afterwards...”

That earnt him a light cuff on the back of the head as Gobber walked past. “Don’t you dare. And...” Gobber sighed as he sat down. “Well, I’m not exactly overrun with tasks nowadays.”

“I thought the repairs were keeping you busy?” The hundreds of nails that had been needed, for a start, were not difficult to making but time-consuming. Then there were weapons and armour to be fixed and replaced, repairs to houses and defences to be done, and the small everyday work that a village the size of Berk could produce.

A weight seemed to settle onto Gobber’s shoulders, and his gaze turned to the floor for a moment before he drew himself up and raised an eyebrow at Hiccup. “Aye, because all those hours I spent working on the weapons, that’s still going on.”

“Oh...” The number of weapons that were damaged or destroyed when fighting dragons was – had been – pretty staggering. Hiccup winced.

“Bah,” Gobber waved it away with his left hand, currently his mug. “Gives me more time to keep you lot in line. Dogsbreath is glad to be back with the farm anyway, I’m sure.”

Or at least not in the forge and fighting with Gobber. Hiccup had heard enough of _that_ as well. “We do appreciate it, Gobber. It’s nice to have someone more experienced around.”

It was, by now, as long since the Red Death as that had been after Hiccup meeting Toothless. Strange that so much could change in so small a time. He looked over to Toothless, who was now lying on the beam with his tail curled underneath and swaying slightly in time with his breathing.

Gobber snorted. “Because I know what you’re doing with those beasts. Nice of you to inform me of that.”

 

 

 

 

 

The message must have travelled quickly, because no more eel turned up in the feeding station and there were no more incidents of dragons climbing on rooftops to avoid them. Stoick talked to the rest of the war council – though it was not just for war, it was the only way that Hiccup had ever heard them described, the heads of the oldest families on Berk and the most respected warriors – and announced before the whole of the village that the dragon-killing arena would become the Dragon Academy, for the training of – and learning about, Hiccup had insisted – dragons.

“Learning?” said Tuffnut, looking disgusted. “Urgh, count me out.”

“Yeah, totally,” added Ruffnut.

Hiccup looked at them in disbelief. “It’s the exact same thing as what we’ve been doing already!”

But Ruffnut had folded her arms across her chest and was looking at him haughtily, and Tuffnut made a dramatic gesture with his arms. “We are _not_ going to any academy,” he declared.

“Fine,” said Hiccup with a sigh. “How about you guys come and hang around at the arena like you usually do, and the rest of us will do the academy bit?”

They exchanged a glance. “Acceptable,” said Ruffnut primly.

He didn’t dare meet Elsa’s eye as he turned around, knowing that if he did they would both burst out laughing. Instead, Hiccup shook his head and set off for the dragons again.

Everybody’s control in the air was increasing. Even Snotlout could actually land without falling off Hookfang, and Astrid startled him by leaping from Stormfly’s back onto Toothless’s in mid-air, grabbing at Hiccup to avoid sliding off again and laughing triumphantly. He responded by rolling Toothless over in the air, and Astrid used the saddle to hang from until she could drop back onto Stormfly once again. It was something that Hiccup could never have discovered with Toothless, not with his foot and Toothless’s fin working together, and it made his heart soar. There was still _so much_ to find out.

They didn’t worry about flying in front of the fishing boats either, now. The weather was getting worse, driving rain or snow almost every day, and Hiccup would not have been at all surprised if the others had refused to come at all. But Vikings were always hardy sorts, and with a few extra cloaks in place and an increasing habit of flying above the clouds it was not too bad.

He at least waited for a day when it was not raining to suggest that they try flying in a less open space. “The dragons let us travel quickly, and we ought to be able to make the best use of that we can,” he explained at the academy. “But we might need to be a bit less visible than, well, being in the sky.”

“This is Berk,” said Astrid. “There’s plenty of clouds for cover.”

“Often, but not always. So instead we’re going to try some low-altitude flying today.”

“Some low what-now?” said Snotlout.

He probably should have known better, Hiccup would have to admit. He rolled his eyes and pulled on his gloves; they were getting to be too small now, actually, the leather breaking up. “Close to the ground. We’ll go out into the woods, one of the places with tall pines and thin cover.” Some of the places that Berk regularly logged should suit, might even have stretches wide enough to fit Hookfang’s wingspan into. Meatlug would probably fare best, though. “You coming with us, Elsa?”

Elsa still spent most of her time with them, listening more and speaking less than any of the others. Stoick was spending increasing amounts of time trying to finish packing the storehouses for the winter and helping people to select the animals that would be put to slaughter this year, and Gobber was up to something with the Gronckle iron that had him singing Viking Through And Through at odd hours. It would probably be a good thing if Elsa did not learn the words to that song. One of these days, Hiccup was determined, he was going to find a dragon that she could tame, so that she did not have to share with people all of the time. Perhaps in the meantime he could make a replica of the old tailfin system so that she could control Toothless, or a new pedal for the new one.

For now, though, she seemed content enough to ride with Hiccup, Astrid or Fishlegs. She had very politely refused Snotlout’s offers, saying that she was not sure she could handle the power of a Monstrous Nightmare, and the one and only attempt at riding with Ruffnut had ended with Barf constantly veering right and down until Hiccup had concluded that an unbalanced Zippleback was clearly an unhappy Zippleback. They had left Tuffnut to dispute the suggestion that they leave him behind instead.

“Yes, thank you,” she said now. Glancing over the dragons, she might have come to the same conclusion about wingspans as Hiccup had, as she crossed to Fishlegs. “May I?”

“Oh! Sure,” said Fishlegs, holding out a hand to help Elsa up as usual. Though he had told Hiccup that he was fascinated with her magic, he had not been able to summon the courage to talk to Elsa herself about it. Hiccup would consider that a good thing for now.

The air was cold but dry, good flying weather if you could handle the sting of the wind on your cheeks. And when they were all together, flying at a Gronckle’s speed, even that was not too bad. Hiccup led them south and west, knowing that there had been strips logged even recently in an attempt to get more boats on the water, more nets in the sea.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” said Astrid, swooping in close and shouting up from just behind Toothless’s wing.

He had to spit hair out of his mouth before he could shout back. Maybe it was time for a haircut. “We need to learn to do this sooner or later! I’d rather not have to suddenly get everyone flying between the trees.”

He supposed it was a mercy that none of them had Timberjacks. It was just wingspan that he was going to have to watch out for. Hiccup twisted round to shout at the others. “And no blasting things out of the way!” The last thing that they needed was to destroy the logging grounds that Berk had carefully maintained for years.

The twins protested, but that was only to be expected. Rolling his eyes, Hiccup hoped that there would be a minimum of collateral damage to the area.

 

 

 

 

 

Meatlug did indeed prove to be the most agile at dodging between the trees, although Fishlegs looked momentary petrified when Hiccup declared that he was the target to be caught this time around. Elsa didn’t look too happy about it either. But he did a good job of avoiding them, with only Astrid and Hiccup able to even get close while Hookfang struggled with his wingspan and the twins managed to repeatedly get Barf and Belch’s necks on opposite sides of the same tree.

In the end, they had not managed to encircle Fishlegs before it started to hail again, striking sharply against any exposed skin, and Hiccup was forced to admit defeat and pull up above the treeline once again. He tried shouting to the others, but the wind was picking up and he could hardly even hear himself. Instead with a nudge of his knee he prompted Toothless to fire into the air, the boom of it echoing off the slopes below.

Snotlout emerged from the trees first, smeared with mud and speckled with leaves, and with nothing less than a small branch stuck on his helmet. He scowled at Hiccup and shouted something that was mercifully lost to the wind.

The wind was really getting going now. Hiccup found himself squinting and shielding his eyes, as the others emerged from the trees one by one, Stormfly clutching a branch in her mouth. He wasn’t even going to ask.

“All right,” he shouted. “We should head back!”

Whether or not they could hear a word that he was saying was up for debate, but they either understood his gesture in the direction of Berk or were willing to follow him anyway. The cloud was coming down, thin wisps of it like streamers of fog around them, and Hiccup dipped as low as he could over the treetops without risking hitting anything along the way.

For a moment he was shocked when one of the trees ahead toppled and crashed to the ground, but of course there was still the logging going on. Besides, the ice made it easier to slide the trees down the slopes towards Berk, or so the men joked. What he did not expect were the screams that followed in the wake of the fall.

He and Toothless surged forwards, ahead of the others, covering the distance in barely a couple of great sweeps of Toothless’s wings and snapping to a halt again right above the latest clearing. One of the trees had fallen the wrong way – against the strip that was being logged, rather than back into it – and Hiccup could see a figure beneath, hear the screaming still going on.

“Come on, Toothless,” he said, settling them down on the edge of the clearing. The tree was huge, a pine six feet across in the trunk and sixty foot long, and it had knocked down smaller trees in its wake. Men were running across, but there was no way that men alone could move the thing. “What’s going on?” shouted Hiccup, but even those people who turned to look at him simply turned away and kept running again. Stumbling from the saddle, he grabbed the arm of one of the women rushing past. “What happened?”

“A felling went bad,” she said. “Hoark’s stuck underneath.”

Oh, Thor. Hoark might have been dissatisfied with what had come to pass with the dragons, but before that he had been a good friend to the family, and always a good man. As the others started to pull in to land behind him, Hiccup made his way over, pushing through people to get to Hoark’s side. He was mostly clear, but much of his left leg was crushed beneath the curve of the tree, forced down into the thick mud. The rains might just have been enough to save him.

At least when they were logging, they already had axes with them. Hoark was unconscious, his face chalky, and one of the others stood over him with an axe already at hand. Not meant for the tree, though; for a tree this size, it would not be fast enough.

Hiccup threw a hand in front of the axe. “No! No, hold off!” They might not have the manpower to move the tree, but that wasn’t all that they had any more.

It was probably a good thing that Smokefeet had not started the downward swing, and that he now held the axe carefully to the side. “Hiccup, I know you mean well, but step aside. This is what needs to be done. Hairfist, get a tourniquet on him!”

He was almost pushed aside as one of the men knelt down, rope already in hand, but Hiccup grabbed hold of Smokefeet’s arm to steady himself. “No, damn it,” he said. “Give us that rope. Astrid!” She was far more successful at pushing through people than he was. “Get the dragons to lift up the tree. We don’t need much, just enough to get him out. Come on, Smokefeet, help them, you’ve got a cool enough head for this.”

“Where are you going?” said Fishlegs, even as Astrid was shouting for the longest rope they had with them.

Hiccup stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled, bringing Toothless bounding over. His wings knocked aside a couple of people, but no harder than being shouldered past, and he obediently drew close enough for Hiccup to slide back into the saddle. “I’m going to get Gothi,” he replied.

He was in the air before anyone had time to reply, even if they had wanted to. The hail was sharp on his cheeks, but he ignored it as he sped back towards Berk, the ground blurring beneath him. Any of the others would still have been faster than a man, yes, but Toothless was unparalleled even among the dragons. It seemed like only heartbeats later that they reached Gothi’s spire, setting down right outside her door.

Almost falling out of the saddle again, Hiccup pounded his fist against the wood, and caught himself on the frame when Gothi opened the door to look at him in surprise. She was one of few people in the village not taller than him, and he nearly addressed the doorframe out of habit before catching himself.

“There’s been an accident with the logging,” he said. It was strange; his heart was pounding, but he was not even out of breath. “Hoark’s leg is pinned. They need you there. I’m sorry, I know I can’t understand what you say,” he heard himself grow pleading as Gothi disappeared off behind the door, her staff tapping on the floor as she went, “but you’re his best chance and I can get you out there quickly and – oh.”

She reappeared with her basket of supplies and gave him an unimpressed look, walking straight out past him to look at Toothless. Toothless cocked his head, plates pricking slightly, then leant forward and sniffed both her and her basket curiously.

“Er, right,” said Hiccup, stepping back in to help Gothi up into the saddle. She was probably better acquainted with Toothless than most of the village, and had not seemed at all concerned to be close to him, but Hiccup had not been quite so sure that she would take so calmly to climbing onto his back. Then again, he reflected, there was a lot that he did not know about Gothi.

She poked the saddle and then looped the leather strap of her basket across her chest so that it rested against her back, and when Hiccup mounted up again her arms wrapped around his waist with more strength than he might have expected from someone her age. He thought he remembered Gobber saying that there had been horses in Berk when Gothi was young, although that could have been Gobber making up stories to fill the long winter nights.

“All right, bud, a little gentler on the way back,” he said softly. Gothi’s staff poked uncomfortably through his arms, but he let it be. Toothless leapt from the spire, picking up speed without even having to beat his wings at first, and then transitioning smoothly to his own flight. Hiccup could not even see where they were headed along the logging paths, with the fog getting worse, but he trusted Toothless to guide them back south over the foothills.

With any luck, the others would have the tree moved by now. Even with how short a time it to fly back, Hiccup found himself feeling restless, helpless, wishing that there was something that he could have done there and then. He knew that his father had been involved in amputations, but a slip of a boy like Hiccup could not be of much use in holding someone down.

He saw the dragons in the air before the people on the ground, and headed straight towards them. To his dismay, the trunk was still in place, Hoark still pinned, and as Toothless landed close by the moans of the injured man were audible. Hiccup just hoped that he was not conscious enough to really feel the pain.

The tree was not budging, even as Astrid ordered all of them to pull together, and Hiccup swallowed back a curse. No, that would not help now. With all of the people here they might be able to roll the trunk, but that could do more damage to Hoark’s leg, and the branches would make it more difficult anyway. Even the largest tree, though, could surely not be _that_ > far beyond the capabilities of all the dragons together. Toothless as well might be enough. Or if not...

He slipped from the saddle as one of the men helped Gothi down, and actually managed to run the few steps to where Elsa was standing. He grabbed her wrist, stumbling into her, but she caught him and pushed him back upright once again.

“Elsa, you have to use your magic,” he said, the words coming out all in one breath.

Her eyes widened. “What?”

She tried to pull away from him again, but he kept a gentle hold on her arms. “Form ice under the tree, help us lift it. You can do it.”

“No,” said Elsa quietly, shaking her head. Her eyes darted over to the people around them, most of them watching uncertainly now, either the dragons above them or the chief’s son talking to a wildling on the ground. “I can’t, I...”

“Please, Elsa. It could save him,” said Hiccup. He leaned his head into her gaze, making her meet his eyes again, and saw some of the fear flake away to reveal determination underneath. “Please.”

She clenched her jaw and nodded. Relief pounding through him, Hiccup all but threw himself back into Toothless again, joining the others in the air. Toothless grabbed hold of the line that Stormfly was gripping in her talons, but instead caught it in his teeth. Even without the grunts of exertion, Hiccup would have known how hard he was working from the way that the muscles of his back flexed, from the sudden fiercer work of his wings.

“Come on, buddy,” he found himself saying again. “Come on Toothless. You can do this.” A growl, low in Toothless’s chest, was the only reply. Most likely the only one that he could make with the rope in his teeth. “Come on.”

Elsa stepped up alongside the tree, ice forming on the ground around her and the Vikings stepping hastily away. She knelt down, and Hiccup saw frost crawling through the bark of the tree, picking out each hollow in white, thickening on the ground around them. The winds became worse, and Hiccup could see Hookfang struggling with the force of them, fire flickering in fits and starts on his wings, but then he felt the give of the tree beneath them, the change in the ropes, and a ragged cheer went up as dragons and ice together hauled the tree up that few precious inches.

People rushed in, and Hoark was pulled out in seconds. “Let go!” Hiccup shouted, and as Toothless released the rope the other dragons did so too.

The tree hit the ground again with a hollow boom, sending shards of ice scattering across the muddy ground. Already on her feet, Elsa was backing away from the people again, pausing only to scoop her bracelets from the ground to judge by the fact that her ice vanished again as soon as she picked up whatever it was. The wind lulled just a little.

“You did it,” said Astrid, pulling down alongside him. She sounded as surprised as he felt.

Hiccup shook his head. “No. We did it.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Why did you do it?” said Withera, Hoark’s wife, much later that evening. She was pregnant with their second child, the first having died while still in the cradle, but from the moment Hoark had been bought home she had taken charge. “No ill meant, but... he was no friend of the dragons.”

“It was the right thing to do,” said Hiccup simply. He looked out to the feeding station, where Toothless, Barf and Belch were rooting around in today’s offering of fish. “Besides, Berk has enemies enough. No point in seeing them where they needn’t be.”

She clapped him on the shoulder, and only the fact that he was leaning on the wall stopped him from being knocked sideways. Hiccup really wished that people would stop doing that so much. “In any case, I thank you. And he will as well, once he wakes up.”

It sounded like Withera would make sure of it. He just hoped that the other dissenters who remained could be won over by rather less dramatic means.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoark the Haggard is the Viking who shouts "Morning!" in Hiccup's face during the very opening scene of the HTTYD film.


	3. Chapter 3

Toothless had a new trick. Hiccup would probably have preferred it if he had not worked it out, but he had to admit that it was effective. It was, after all, difficult not to wake up in the mornings when a Night Fury was enthusiastically licking your face.

“Oh, come on, bud,” he said, trying to push Toothless away again. “This again? Really?”

Even more unfortunate was the fact that Toothless was not exactly picky about which part of Hiccup’s face he licked. Hiccup grimaced at the taste of Night Fury spit on his lips and wiped it away with the back of his hand. Well, he supposed, at least it was before he had washed his face.

“All right, all right, I’m coming,” he added through a yawn. He rolled to a sitting position, grabbing his foot from beside his bed. Putting it on was automatic now, as familiar as putting on boots. Hiccup glanced over to where Toothless had been sleeping, relieved to see that Elsa was not there and therefore must have avoided the nightmares tonight, before pulling on some clothes and shrugging on a cloak. “Who would have thought dragons were morning creatures...” he muttered, as Toothless lightly bounced in place again, huffing with each hop.

He opened the door to a cold breeze and a scattering of snow on the ground, and shivered. They wouldn’t hit the depths of winter for a few months, but it wasn’t going to be fun even in the meantime. Toothless nudged him out of the way to bound out, lolloping around as if he had been cooped up inside for moons rather than just sleeping overnight, then turned to face Hiccup with his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth

“Yeah, yeah, let’s go get you some breakfast.”

The sun was probably up, but it was hidden behind the grey-white clouds, and the world seemed ghostly in the gloom. Yawning, Hiccup followed Toothless to the feeding station, and glanced in to find the fish frozen in place.

He looked at Toothless and nodded his head towards the fish, hoping that this time Toothless would remember to hold back on his power and not send partially-burnt fish scattering all over the immediate area. Although at least the cloak would help with that.

Luckily, this time Toothless breathed fire more gently across the surface of the fish, the ice melting away. The faint smell of cooking filled the air, but it wasn’t enough to do much more than make Hiccup’s stomach rumble. With a smack of his lips, Toothless started eating, and Hiccup leant against the edge of the bowl. It wasn’t even warm.

“You know, I think you’re getting better at this.”

A series of thuds behind him made him look round to see Hookfang banging his head against the roof of the Jorgensen’s house. Hiccup frowned vaguely, but a hatch was thrown open from beneath the snow and he heard Spitelout hollering something indistinct. Hookfang’s reaction was to stick his head through the conveniently opened window, to more frustrated shouting. Almost within seconds, Snotlout was stumbling out of the front door of his house, helmet askew, one boot on and the other in his hand, waving at Hookfang.

“Get down from there! You stop that right now!”

Trying and failing not to grin, Hiccup at least managed not to start laughing as Snotlout hopped around, trying to pull his other boot on. Withdrawing his head from the window, some item of clothing or other dangling off the horn on his nose, Hookfang leant round until he could see Snotlout and grunted a hello.

Hiccup looked over to Toothless, who was still rooting through the fish. “Well, at least it’s not just you and me today.”

Finally managing to get his boot on, Snotlout straightened his helmet and pointed to the ground. “Hookfang, you get down here right now or you are not getting that door to my room.”

With another grunt, Hookfang crawled down the side of the building and headbutted Snotlout in... well, the everything, to be quite honest. Snotlout pulled free the item of clothing and opened the door long enough to throw it back into the house before sticking his hands in his armpits and clomping over to the feeding station.

“Stupid dragons getting up at stupid times...” he grumbled under his breath.

“Well, at least they sleep through the night,” said Hiccup, but Snotlout gave him the glare of the not-quite-awake and he let the matter drop again. Instead he leant his head back, letting his mind wander. He should check on Hoark at some point today, and have another bash at working out how to get the slab of slate into his room for Toothless. Maybe try flying through the trees again, or spend more time high up. The others still complained about the thinner air sometimes, though Hiccup was used to it by now. Sadly, suggesting that people save their breath by not talking so much had not proved particularly effective.

He was startled from his thoughts as Toothless sneezed. At least, he was fairly sure it was a sneeze; he hadn’t heard a sound quite like it before. Snotlout gave a yelp, and Hiccup whirled in time to see Hookfang flaming up, fire licking out all along his body. Another sneeze knocked the feeding station to the ground, almost sending Hiccup with it, and Toothless started inching his way backwards, shaking his head.

“Whoa, Hookfang!” Snotlout shouted. “Cool it! Hiccup, what was that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, regaining his balance and walking towards Toothless, one hand outstretched. “What’s up, bud? You get some dust up your nose?”

Toothless made a plaintive sound deep in his throat, looking up at Hiccup with wide eyes. His pupils were so large that they were almost black, and he was crouching low to the ground, not arching his back but trying to push down instead. Hushing him gently, Hiccup continued forwards, but Toothless kept backing away from him.

“Toothless?” said Hiccup again, feeling a bubble of concern start forming in his chest. “What’s wrong? Let me see.”

For a moment, Toothless’s jaw fell open, and Hiccup blinked at the reddish glow inside. Then he coughed – and that was what it must have been, a cough rather than a sneeze – and a fireball hit the ground in front of him, melting the snow in an instant and leaving grass smouldering behind it.

Hiccup’s hand tightened on the head of his cane. Toothless’s eyes weren’t focusing on him, and he kept tossing his head, tail whipping back and forth. The dragon squeezed his eyes closed and Hiccup wanted to fall to his knees and ask what he could do, what was wrong.

“Snotlout,” he shouted over his shoulder, “please tell me that you’ve got Hookfang under control. Toothless, it’s all right, look at me. If something’s wrong, just... just let it out, bud. Three more shots and then we can have a proper look, huh?”

Toothless opened his eyes again, but the green was hardly visible now, and he pawed at the ground hard enough to leave raked-up scars in the mud. Hiccup tried lunging forwards, hand outstretched, but Toothless sprung to the side with another explosive fireball. This one struck one of the wooden posts supporting the nearby ramp, immediately catching on the wood and setting it burning.

This was bad. “Oh, Thor,” said Hiccup. “Toothless, buddy, come on. Fire at the ground if you need to.” Toothless was making a sound that was almost a whine, deep in his throat, and Hiccup’s heart felt like it was going to be ripped from his chest. “Snotlout, a hand here!”

The barrels of water which had once been meant for the dragon attacks might still have been around the village, but they had frozen some days ago.

“What is wrong with your dragon?” snapped Snotlout.

“I don’t know!” It came out a little more desperate than frustrated, as Toothless started to shake his head more violently, closing his eyes once again. His mouth opened, the red glow still in his throat, then his teeth flashed as he closed it again, throat working. Taking a deep breath, Hiccup ran the few strides and flung himself over Toothless’s shoulder before the dragon could pull away again. “Toothless, come on. Get a grip, tell me – argh!”

Toothless bucked violently, rearing off the ground and throwing Hiccup aside as he fired straight up into the air. The fireball shot upwards with a sound like thunder in its wake, but Toothless was growling now and that was all that Hiccup could hear, a growl with a pained edge running through it. He pushed himself up off the ground, struggling with the slush and mud that made it hard to get a grip, and made himself reach out with a shaking hand, palm outstretched.

“Please, Toothless,” he whispered.

For a moment, he thought that Toothless would listen, that the black in his eyes was contracting slightly. Then with another pained shriek, Toothless fired again, the blast knocking over a cart and sending sparks jumping through the firewood in it. They started to burn, but despite it all Hiccup felt a flush of relief run through him.

“All right, buddy, that’s six, that’s it all. Let me have a look...”

Toothless was still backing away. He could hear shouting now, people calling for water to put out the fire, running for the well – if that had not frozen as well. But Hiccup could not care, not while Toothless was tossing his head, pawing at the ground, wings half-flared as if he wanted to take off.

Then Toothless fired again.

It hit the nearest house, leaving behind nothing worse than a burn mark but still enough to make Hiccup stop in his tracks. Because that was _seven_ , that was beyond the shot limit, and Toothless fired _again_ into the ground and _again_ into the remains of the feeding station, and Hookfang was roaring as well and people were shouting all around him.

Toothless looked straight up, meeting Hiccup’s eyes. They were wide open, pleading, but Hiccup did not know what to do, had no idea what was going on.

Another fireball ripped out of Toothless. Hiccup threw himself sideways, but the blast clipped his left foot and thrust him backwards as well. He hit the ground hard, air knocked out of him, and looked up to see Toothless running, head down and wings back, from the village.

“Toothless!”

“Hiccup! What is happening!”

Cold hands wrapped around his arm to help him to his feet, but he tried to pull out of Elsa’s grip all the same, to go after Toothless. She held him back with surprising strength, and he looked round at her more in desperation than in anger. “There’s something wrong with Toothless,” he said, all in a breath. “I have to help him.”

He heard the sound of another fireball, another characteristic Night Fury scream, and flinched bodily.

“Something’s wrong,” he insisted. Elsa looked in the direction that Toothless had gone, then nodded and released her grip, but before Hiccup took take advantage of the moment his father came running up as well.

“Hiccup!” he barked. “I’ve got half the village shouting that your dragon is setting the place on fire!”

Hiccup could see that Stoick already knew that it was true, that he had heard those unmistakeable Night Fury cries. But he doubted that Stoick knew the nuances of them yet, knew that there had been pain in each one. The marks on the house and the smouldering firewood didn’t tell the best of stories.

“I don’t know why,” he said quickly, “but there’s something wrong. He’s gone past his shot limit, something must be–”

“Shot limits are not the point, Hiccup–”

“His fire was turning red!” Hiccup waved an arm in the direction that Toothless had taken. “It was red, it was too many shots, he was in pain; Dad, there’s something wrong. I have to help him.”

“You have to stop him before he sets the village aflame,” said Stoick. There was anger in the set of his brows – but fear in his eyes. “In more ways than one.”

Hiccup swallowed. The village meeting had been in favour of the dragons – but in favour of giving them a chance, and this was it. “I’ll do it, I’ll fix this,” he said, more confidently than he really felt. “You guys deal with the fires, I’ll deal with Toothless. Elsa, please go and get Astrid for me, I’m going to need to borrow Stormfly.” Hookfang might have been right there, but he was too unpredictable, and Snotlout had only just got him to extinguish his fire anyway. He looked his father in the eye. “I’ll help him.”

 

 

 

 

 

The helplessness was the worst part. The minutes that Hiccup had to wait for Elsa to get Astrid and come back with Stormfly felt interminably long, try as he might to fill them by retrieving his cane, redoing the straps on his leg where it had come loose, and helping as best he could as Snotlout and Fishlegs righted the feeding station and started to throw the scattered fish back into it.

Some of the fish were whole, straight from the nets, while others were scraps and heads and fins. The dragons weren’t fussy about which parts they ate. Hiccup was just dumping in another handful, picking stray scales off his hands, when he heard the beating of wings behind him and turned to see Astrid land. Her hair was awry, and she wasn’t wearing her pauldrons or belt – or even a cloak – as she jumped down to the ground. Elsa slipped down more carefully from where she had been sitting behind Astrid on Stormfly’s back.

“What happened?” she said, looking around at the trampled, melted snow and the people arguing again. “Elsa said that something was wrong with Toothless. Where is he?”

“He ran off,” said Hiccup. “I need to borrow Stormfly, I’m sorry. I have to find him.” Wiping his hands on his cloak, he crossed over to Stormfly, who cocked her head at him curiously. She bent at the knees to let him climb on her back; Astrid had not even bothered with her saddle, but Hiccup could handle that easily enough. He was just extending his hand to Elsa as Astrid went to climb back up again.

“You want me to come?” said Elsa warily. Her hand, which she had been resting on Stormfly’s wing, came back to curl against her chest. “Astrid would be better. She knows Stormfly.”

“But you know Toothless,” Hiccup replied. “I’m sorry, Astrid, I just... Toothless needs us. And Elsa and I have known him the longest.”

Astrid nodded, and stepped back again. “I understand.” She wrapped her arms around herself, gooseflesh rising all down her arms. “I’m sure that Stormfly will too.”

He looked back to Elsa more beseechingly, and she looked around as if thinking of fleeing before meeting his gaze once again. “All right,” she said quietly. She stepped forwards, and accepted both Hiccup’s hand and Stormfly’s bow to settle into place behind him. When standing, Stormfly’s back was angled, and it was a little harder to get a good seat than it would be in the air. Elsa’s arms slipped around Hiccup’s waist.

“Thanks,” he said, to both of them, and tucking his cane under his arm leant his weight forwards. “Come on, Stormfly.”

She probably understood the set of his body more than his words, but sprang into the air all the same, climbing fast. Hiccup had to hold her back to keep her below the clouds again, needing to be able to see where Toothless had gone.

It wasn’t hard to find his trail. Small fires and plumes of smoke, most already being extinguished, made a line from the feeding station through the village and south into the forest. The snow was thicker there, not worn away by the passing of boots and the warmth of houses and people, and mercifully there were only a few thin wisps of smoke and no trees were aflame. But this was more than six shots, far more, and Hiccup felt the curling of panic again as he steered Stormfly lower, almost skimming the tops of the trees as he tried to follow the path that Toothless had taken.

“I know this route,” he murmured, stilling in the air. He frowned. It looked different from above, rather than knowing the landmarks of particular trees or rocks or tilts of the ground. “He’s going to the cove.”

Even on the ground, Toothless was fast, but Stormfly was quick for a Nadder and the air would let them take the more direct route. Hiccup felt Elsa tense up at the mention of the cove, but could not find the words to ask, and he just angled Stormfly straight towards the cove and pressed himself down against her neck.

The air rushed around them. Stormfly was fast, but she wasn’t a patch on Toothless even on his laziest of days, and it was just close enough to ache. As they drew closer, Hiccup could see flashes of red-white flame in the cove, and it began to snow around them as they came in to land.

Toothless shrieked and ran to the far side of the cove as Hiccup slid down to the ground, wings flared and tail whipping. He fired again, but turned his face to the cliff and let the flame lick against the rocks. There were black marks all along the limestone, and though ice glittered across much of the cliff it had melted away in patches.

“Bud, please,” said Hiccup. The grass brushed against his legs as he walked straight forwards, but Toothless kept the pool between them. “Let us help you. Elsa, go round that side,” he said, waving off to the left. “We’ve got to stop him running away. He can’t get out of the cove, I don’t think...” he eyed the narrow tunnel that Elsa had found in the first place. Somehow he did not even want to speak the thought aloud, for fear that Toothless would not only understand but would be able to squeeze out that way. If he vanished elsewhere in the forest, he was not sure they could find him so easily.

Toothless cried out, short and shrill, eyes squeezed closed as he turned his face down. He clawed the ground again, leaving furrows behind. His mouth opened and his chest heaved, and Hiccup flinched, but this time no fire came and a flicker of hope came back again.

“Toothless,” said Hiccup. So strange to be back here after almost four moons, in the snow rather than the rain and knowing that something was wrong but not how he could fix it. At least with cleaning the wound in Toothless’s tail, he had known.

At the sound of his name, Toothless looked up sharply, but when he turned to run away he must have seen Elsa on the other side of him. This time the sound he made was almost a whine, and he hunched to the ground again, backing up until he was almost against the rock wall.

“It’s us, Toothless,” he said, voice cracking slightly. Toothless coughed up another fireball, turning his head towards the wall just in time that the ball of flame burst against it. “It’s just us.”

Even having found Toothless, the helplessness was overwhelming. He wished that there was something that he could do, anything; even being able to comfort Toothless would be better than standing here calling to him in the middle of the cove. It was starting to snow, just little specks, but that was the last straw, the last gods-damned straw, and Hiccup stomped his good foot against the ground in frustration.

“I wish you could just tell me what was wrong!” he said, closing his eyes as well for a moment. The inside of his head felt too small, and he had another throbbing headache starting up just behind his eyes. A cold touch against his arm startled him, but when he jumped he did not lose his footing this time. Hiccup’s eyes snapped open and he turned to see that Elsa was right next to him and that Toothless had not moved, not run into the great open gap. He looked at Elsa as if she would somehow have the answer.

“Ask him,” she said.

That was all that he had been doing. If it had been form anyone else, Hiccup would have rolled his eyes, but Elsa spoke with complete earnestness. “He doesn’t exactly speak Northur,” he replied instead.

“Neither did I.”

She had a point, he supposed. But a broken ankle was easy to see, easy to deal with. Hiccup did not know where to begin with knowing what was wrong with Toothless. He once more looked over at the dragon, who was giving him a look that was faintly hopeful, had to be hopeful, surely could not be as desperate as Hiccup felt. “You weren’t a dragon,” he said, a little more quietly.

Elsa’s eyes were still hard to read sometimes. “I was a wildling,” she replied.

It stilled any response that Hiccup might have made. He wasn’t sure how much Elsa had heard, what people had said about wildlings in her hearing. Well, he’d heard more than a few comments at the village meeting. Making the dragons a part of Berk had been such a huge task that it had seemed to eat up all of his time, and he realised too late and at the wrong moment that he had almost certainly not helped Elsa as much as he should. He would have to redress that, once they got through this.

It had to be _once_. He couldn’t bring himself to think about _if_.

He just nodded, and looked to Toothless again. He was pressed low to the ground, plates back, head tilted up like he was begging for food. But the expression was all wrong, lips twitching with pain, and there was hardly any green visible in his eyes at all.

Just seeing the pain didn’t help, Hiccup forced himself to think. Toothless’s mouth opened, and Hiccup flinched, but it was just to make that head-thrusting, hawking motion again, teeth all withdrawn. But nothing happened, and Toothless shook his head with a rumble.

They had just been at the feeding station, eating breakfast, like they had the previous day and the one before that. And then... this.

“Eating,” said Hiccup quietly. He looked at Toothless’s heaving sides, the working of his throat. “He was eating.”

Elsa looked at him questioningly, cocking her head, and finally letting her hand slip away from his arm. Before she could speak, however, there was another of those Night Fury shrieks, and the air around them flared white. Hiccup grabbed Elsa and pulled her away, but ice had shot up from the ground in a jagged clear sheet, with a crack down the middle of it where Toothless’s fireball must have struck.

“ _Aan_ ,” whimpered Elsa, and went to pull away from Hiccup, but he kept hold of her.

“Elsa, I need your help,” he said. He could see the panic in her eyes, feel her starting to shake, and since the fireball had been no closer than others that had come their way it had to have been the offshoot of her magic. There just wasn’t the time, not now. “Please. I need you to help me.”

Her wrists were still so thin that he could wrap his hand all the way around them. If Elsa stood up straight she was taller than Hiccup, but too often she seemed to fold down on herself so that they were eye-to-eye.

“It must have been something that he ate,” said Hiccup. “Something in the feeding station. And he can’t spit it out again. That’s got to be it.”

How to make your dragon throw up hadn’t exactly been covered in the lessons at the arena. The first emetic that Hiccup could think of was seawater, but the dragons had all been diving in and out of the sea with no problems and he feared that it would not actually work.

“All right,” he said, glancing over at Toothless. “Elsa, I need you to take Stormfly back to the village–” The fear started up in Elsa’s eyes again, but he forced himself to press on. “–and ask Gobber for an _emetic_.” He said the word very clearly, but Elsa showed no indication for a moment that she had heard it. “An emetic for dragons. If he doesn’t know, ask Gothi instead.”

“I can stay with him,” she said. “The ice,” it took her a moment, and she had to swallow before she could speak on. “The ice will protect me.”

It had already done so; Hiccup had seen it. Elsa had been horrified at the sight, but her ice had blocked the fireball all the same, and Hiccup had not been looking to see how close it might have come otherwise. But when Hiccup had looked at Toothless, it had not been Elsa that the dragon was turning his beseeching gaze on.

Hiccup shook his head. “He needs me here. Elsa, I know that I’ve asked so much of you, but please,” he slipped his hands so that they had taken hold of hers, and squeezed more gently. “Please do this for me. For him.”

“Emetic,” said Elsa. Her lips trembled slightly, but her hands were steadier as she slipped them out of Hiccup’s. “Gobber, then Gothi.”

“Thank you,” he breathed, legs feeling shaky underneath him. He watched as she stepped forwards, extending one hand with the palm out as they always did. Toothless hunkered down lower to the ground, but did not run away again, even as Elsa’s hand came to rest just for a moment on his forehead. When she took it away again, there was a faint outline of frost left behind, but it melted away in seconds.

Elsa crossed back to Stormfly, who dipped lower than usual to let her climb on. Perhaps it was the lack of saddle that made her seat so awkward, or the fact that she clung on desperately as Stormfly took off and swept over the edge of the cove, back towards the village. As they vanished off, Hiccup turned to Toothless again, leaving his cane on the ground where it had fallen.

“Looks like it’s just you and me again, huh, bud?” he said, as calmly as he was able. “Elsa’s going to get help. She’ll be back soon.” He reached out his hand as she had done, as he had done so many times, and shuffled forwards. The ice that had shot from the ground was still there, not falling away as Elsa’s work had done before. Hiccup edged around it and towards Toothless, whose plates flicked warningly but who did not back away.

It seemed like an eternity, until Toothless finally lifted his head the last fraction to brush against Hiccup’s palm. His skin felt burning hot, scales rougher than usual to the touch, and barely had Hiccup had time to register it when Toothless snatched his head away again. Before Hiccup could even protest, another fireball burst from Toothless’s mouth, splattering against the rocky wall. Hiccup threw up an arm to protect his eyes, but did not shy back, and when Toothless went to run away again he lunged forwards with both of his hands outstretched.

“No! Toothless, you don’t have to run, it’s all right. I know that you’re not going to hurt me.”

Hiccup’s feet went out from under him, and the next thing that he knew he was on the mud and snow, half-sprawled over Toothless’s tail. Toothless looked over his shoulder and cocked his head as Hiccup pulled himself to a sitting position and ignored the wet hair falling in his eyes. He put his hand on Toothless’s tail, over the scar where the fin should have been.

“You never did,” he added, more quietly.

He wished that he knew how much Toothless understood. Toothless pawed at the ground once more, but it was not so deep and only grazed the grass beneath the snow, and he left his tail draped over Hiccup’s lap. At least it was something, perhaps. A shudder ran through the dragon’s body, and he fired again, this time right away from Hiccup so that it burst into steam against the surface of the pool.

It had to have been the fish, it had to be. And there had to be something to make him throw it up so that he would be all right again. Hiccup wasn’t sure what else he could offer. He ran his hand over the scar, the thick black skin raised and without scales. Ridges marked where the bones of the fin had once projected, and the skin burned as hot as his forehead had done.

“I’m here. I’m right here.”

 

 

 

 

 

Every time the fireballs tore from him after that, Toothless turned his face to the wall or the lake, and Hiccup stayed quietly by his tail hoping that his presence might be some sort of comfort. He kept his eyes on the horizon, waiting for the appearance of a dragon silhouetted against the sky, and felt his heart leap into his throat when he caught Stormfly’s distinctive form.

“She’s back,” he told Toothless, who murmured something. The dragon had one wing extended over his head, and the fireballs were coming less frequently now, but he was making low rumbling sounds that just worried Hiccup more. “She’s back.”

The snow had seeped into his clothes and right down to his skin, to the point that he couldn’t feel it all that much any more. That wasn’t a good sign. Hiccup rolled to his knees and then managed to get to his feet, waving his arm as if he somehow needed to attract Elsa’s attention. Mostly it was for something to do. As Stormfly came closer, Hiccup blinked and frowned at her outline, but no, there were definitely two people on her back.

Once they were more than an outline against the sky, he realised that it was Astrid, a cloak now wrapped around her shoulders and her hair done up. She tried to get Stormfly to land close by, but at the last minute the Nadder arced away to settle on the far side of the pond instead, tossing her head and looking at Toothless with wide eyes.

Astrid was jumping down and running almost as soon as Stormfly’s feet hit the snow, a canteen clutched in one hand. At the sound of her crunching footsteps, Toothless jerked to his feet, hissing a warning and backing away a few paces.

“Whoa!” said Hiccup immediately. “It’s all right! It’s just Astrid!”

Toothless growled, and Astrid’s pace slowed, but she still ran right up to Hiccup and pushed the costrel into his hands. “Mustard water,” she said, without him needing to ask. “Gothi’s idea. It’s strong; he might not like it.”

“He doesn’t need to like it,” replied Hiccup. It didn’t seem like very much to face a Night Fury with, but it was the best that they had. He pulled out the cork and advanced on Toothless, but with a snort Toothless turned to run away again. “Oh, please, gods, no...” Hiccup muttered.

But before Toothless could run far, ice shot up like a wall in front of him, at least six foot high and made up of jagged spikes. Toothless gave a shriek that turned into a fireball, but though it left a melted hollow in the ice it could not break through. He whirled to face Hiccup and Astrid, wings half-unfurled, plates flared.

“We really don’t want to do this the hard way,” said Astrid, but she still undid her cloak and let it slip to the ground. The snow was still falling around them, dulling the scene and giving it a dreamlike edge.

The mustard water was so strong that Hiccup could smell it, sharp and hot in his nose. Toothless’s lips parted and his teeth glittered slightly as he growled again, but Hiccup marched over, dropped to his knees right in front of Toothless, and stuck one hand into the dragon’s mouth before anyone could react.

It was probably a good question who was the most surprised by the act, but it could well have been Toothless as he hurriedly retracted his teeth. His tongue was hot and dry under Hiccup’s hand, and when Hiccup pushed upwards on the roof of his mouth to open his jaw wider, there was a curl of mist right in the back of his throat. It was white, thicker than usual, with an unhealthily milky edge to it. Hiccup felt the twitch of muscles in Toothless’s chest, felt the building anticipation of fire, and hurriedly emptied as much of the mustard water as he could down Toothless’s throat.

Toothless sneezed. This time it was just a sneeze, with no fire, and he snorted afterwards as he pulled away, shaking his head again. His nostrils flared like he had inhaled dust, and he gagged on the air.

“Why exactly did you _want_ him to throw up?” said Astrid, walking up behind and hooking her hands under Hiccup’s armpits to pull him to his feet again. “Elsa didn’t get as far as explaining that.”

“He ate something that did this,” said Hiccup. “Contender for the strangest thing you’ve seen me doing?”

“Probably.”

Toothless backed up, sneezing again, and Hiccup busied his hands by trying to force the cork back into place once again. His throat pulsed, his mouth opened... and finally, Toothless vomited up a rush of fish guts onto the snow.

It smelt worse than he could have anticipated. Hiccup almost gagged himself at the smell, and saw Astrid put the back of her hand to her mouth. His eyes, though, were fixed on Toothless, and as the Night Fury looked up his eyes were constricting again, green returning.

Hiccup smiled. “Toothless,” he said quietly. He dropped the costrel and ran forwards, throwing his arms around Toothless’s neck as the dragon stretched upwards once again. Toothless gave a rumble that ran through them both, and Hiccup pressed his face to his neck with a relieved groan. “Oh, bud. Don’t scare me like that.”

Toothless responded by licking his face, and at that moment Hiccup recoiled. Dragon breath was one thing, but post-vomit dragon breath was in entirely its own class.

“Sorry,” he said, “that’s pushing it.” But he held up his hand for Toothless to butt against and was more glad than ever when he felt that Toothless’s skin was already cooling down again.

He looked round at the fish guts, then grabbed one of the teazles that grew at the foot of the cliff and snapped it off at the base. Trying not to breathe too deeply, he used it to poke at the fish, put there was nothing identifiable among it all. Which was probably what you got for being strange enough to poke partially-digested fish. Just as he was about to give up, though, he noticed a piece that was less digested than the others, the flesh still looking like muscle, a small white circle of bone still visible at one end of a long, thin strip.

“What are you doing?” said Elsa. Her wall of ice had sloughed away again, and she was fiddling with the bracelets that were back on her wrist.

“That,” said Astrid, sounding a little more unsettled and distinctly more disgusted, “is a very good question.”

“He was eating,” said Hiccup. He managed to hook the piece of fish that stood out onto the end of the teazle and deposit it away from the rest of the guts. It was a couple of feet long, headless and finless, more neatly skinned than the other remains. _Skinned_ , Hiccup realised, not skinless. At first glance, he might have thought that it was a snake, but his gut twisted as he realised what he was seeing. “It’s eel.”

“What?” said Astrid. “The dragons won’t eat eel.”

“Maybe it was inside another fish,” said Hiccup. “Or maybe skinning it stops them from recognising it. Maybe he just didn’t notice... but we told people not to put eel in the feeding station.”

It could have been an accident. There were hundreds of people on Berk, dozens of whom might have been throwing fish into the feeding station on any given day. All it took was one person who had not heard. But eel was fairly rare on Berk, with relatively few people who set traps for them in the rivers, and considered a delicacy by most. And this one looked to be a good size, in good condition, and already skinned. It didn’t make sense to throw it away.

Astrid’s hand on his shoulder jolted him from his thoughts. “This time we’ll tell them a bit more... firmly.” Somehow she managed just with the tone of her voice to promise that there would be axes involved.

Stepping carefully over, Toothless nudged Hiccup’s hip, and Hiccup ran a fond hand over his forehead in response. “All right, bud. Let’s get you home.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Astrid. “We bought his tail as well. Thought that you might need that.”

He hadn’t even managed to think that far. “I really don’t deserve you guys,” said Hiccup.

Astrid punched him in the shoulder. “Like you ever did.”


	4. Chapter 4

Toothless did not loose any more fireballs on the way back to Berk. It took them more time to return, and Stormfly had to hold back to stay alongside Toothless in the air even if carrying Hiccup and Elsa should not have slowed him in the slightest.

“It’s all right, bud,” said Hiccup, rubbing the back of Toothless’s neck. “You can rest once we get home.”

He could not help but wince at the path of destruction visible from the centre of town down to the cove. The falling snow would help, perhaps, and Berk was too wet for fires to catch in the forest in any but the hottest of summers. Some of the damage to the village might take a little longer to fix, but at least they had plenty of experience.

As he landed by their house and slid to the ground, however, a shout went up. “There he is!”

Hiccup frowned, turning. He had not expected anyone to greet them at all, save perhaps his father or Gobber, and certainly had not expected to be greeted by Mildew, staff in hand and scowl firmly in place. “What’s going on?” he said warily.

“There it is!” declared Mildew, pointing straight at Hiccup. “It and the boy both! If the Chief won’t deal with this danger, then we will!”

There were various rumbles off assent from those following him, and Hiccup saw a few weapons being readied in their owner’s hands. He stood defiantly in front of Toothless, or as defiantly as his short, scrawny frame had ever been capable of. “What are you talking about?”

“The fires,” snapped one of the men behind Mildew, and Hiccup’s head was whirling to the point that he couldn’t even tell who it was.

“Aye,” said another, “the beast’s a danger.”

“You said to give them a chance,” said Mudbreath, at Mildew’s elbow. That was the last thing that Hiccup needed. “They’ve had it. Your father is down there helping to put out the fires. Time you stopped them from happening. That beast needs to go.”

Hiccup backed up a step, towards Toothless, until Elsa’s cold touch met with the back of his arm and he knew that she was there as well. To their side, Astrid had climbed down from Stormfly and was standing defiantly in place. “It’s not like you’ve never had food poisoning, Mudbreath. That wasn’t an attack. That was an accident.”

“An accident?” snapped Mildew. “Aye, sure that’s what they’d like you to think. Who’s to say he isn’t just waiting for the chance to take you too?”

Even the oblique reference to his mother was enough to make Hiccup’s blood boil. His hands shook, and he could not even muster a reply, because those words should not have been on Mildew’s lips, Mildew had no right to say those things. His eyes bored into the man, but there was no fear on Mildew’s face, just malice in his eyes and a dark twist of pleasure to his mouth.

“It’s been moons, Mildew,” said Astrid. The old man barely gave her a glance, and even that was full of scorn. “I think they’d have had their chance by now.”

“And what was that?” Mildew gestured to the town below them. “Homes aflame, food spoiled!”

“Aflame?” That, at least, Hiccup could respond to. “A bit singed is not aflame, Mildew, and I’d have thought that you knew the difference. A badly-kept bonfire can do worse!”

“That doesn’t mean they should be left to burn. Fires should be put out. And so should dragons.”

Hiccup drew himself up. “If you so much as touch Toothless, I’ll–”

“You’ll what, _boy_? Set it on me? I’ve spent a lifetime killing dragons, you see if I can’t take this one.”

The pain behind his eyes was back again, bringing with it a red mist. There was a part of him, a small and angry part that was sick of being talked down to and even more sick of Mildew’s threats, still struck hard by the reference to his mother, that wanted to say Mildew was welcome to try. But he doubted there was anyone that could stand in Toothless’s way. Hiccup clenched his fists but did not rise to the challenge. “You will not touch him,” he promised. “Because I will not let you.”

“They don’t belong here,” said Mildew. “Not among men. And if you can’t see that, then perhaps you don’t either.”

Hiccup heard Elsa’s sharp intake of breath behind him, and saw Astrid’s eyes narrow dangerously as she stalked closer. Throwing up one hand and hoping that it would be enough to stop Astrid from doing anything foolish, he kept his words dangerously, unwaveringly level.

“This is my home,” he said. “As I am the son of the chief. You have been told like any of the others that if you will not accept the dragons, then it is on you to leave.”

“You are not chief. Perhaps we should go back to the old ways.”

The ways of fighting and bloodshed, when the strongest swords would wrench power from the previous chief. The ways that made rules short, bloody, and made people so obsessed with taking power from each other that they had no time for their people. The ways that were generations gone. “Say that again, Mildew, and it will be treason,” said Hiccup.

That, at least, was enough to make the old man pause for a moment. For once he had only humans around him, none of the ever-present sheep at his side, and though many of them were armed, he was not. Speaking against chiefhood was speaking against Stoick as well, and it would be all too easy to call that treason. “We didn’t come for you,” he said finally, with an edge to his voice that spoke of resentment for being forced to return to the issue of the dragons. “We came for them. That one first, then the others.”

Behind him, Toothless growled, but to Hiccup’s ears it sounded weary. One or two of the men behind Mildew took a step back.

“If you came for _him_ , you came for me.”

 _It_. He was sick of the word _it_ on everyone’s lips, the dismissive way that some people still talked about dragons and wildlings both. And if people were smart enough to usually keep it out of his hearing, he dreaded to think how much of it he had missed.

Mudbreath strode forwards, eyes grim, and Hiccup had a terrible suspicion he was about to be bodily hauled out of the way. He braced himself against it, but before Mudbreath could come within three paces the temperature of the air around them dropped sharply, stinging cold against his skin, and spikes of ice shot up from the ground to knee-height between them.

“Stay away,” said Elsa warningly. Hiccup wasn’t sure whether he caught a tremble in her voice.

“Hiding behind a wildling,” scoffed Mudbreath, but he did take a step back.

Mildew spat on the ground. “A wildling, a dragon...” he glanced over at Astrid, “and the niece of Fearless Finn Hofferson. What a guard you have. But take them away, and what’s left?” his lip curled, but it didn’t much look like a smile. “Three-quarters of a boy who can hardly lift an axe and should have been left–”

“Enough,” said Hiccup firmly, but at the same moment Astrid stormed right up to Mildew, drawing a knife from her belt and gesturing warningly with it.

“What’s _left_ is the one who killed the Red Death and bought the peace with the dragons,” she snarled. “Who has more brains than the rest of you put together.”

Hiccup stepped forwards and grabbed Astrid’s arm to pull her away. He could see Bloodstone readying her axe, and did not want this to turn to violence. There had been no deaths since the fight with the Red Death and the days afterwards, but there would be more from cold and hunger before the winter was out. They did not need to add to them like this. “Astrid,” he said softly.

He could never have expected Elsa to speak up as well. “And he has friends.”

“So it does speak,” said Mildew, into the silence that followed Elsa’s words. “I had heard rumours.”

Nobody dared to laugh. Hiccup glanced round, still pulling Astrid back, to see that Elsa had slipped off her bracelets but stood otherwise unarmed beside Toothless. The snow around her was a little thicker, and there were eddies and curls in it that did not look to be quite the work of the wind, but that was only if you knew to look for them.

Hiccup took a deep breath and finally released Astrid; she was as taut as a bowstring, but he hoped that she had enough control over her temper. “Go home, Mildew. You’ve left your sheep unattended again.”

“Is that a threat?” Mildew turned to those behind him. There looked to be more of them now, though there was every chance that those at the back had just overheard the noise and come out of curiosity. “Did you hear that? He threatened me! He threatened my flock!”

Some words of agreement, some of argument. It was the village meeting all over again, but this time there was an edge to the air, as tangible as the smell of smoke. “It was a suggestion that you stop picking fights,” replied Hiccup, raising his voice slightly. He stepped in front of Astrid. “And enjoy the peace.”

“Peace! What peace is there, while dragons are running wild through the town! You saw what happened today!” warming to his theme, Mildew addressed those behind him as much as he did Hiccup.

“The dragons have done _nothing_ to harm anyone!” said Hiccup. “What happened today was an accident. Eel meat in the feeding station again,” he added, deliberately raising his voice this time. “They avoid it for a reason, and this is why!”

“Oh, sure,” said Mildew. “Because we know how much dragons hate to burn things.”

Two moons without anything, and now one eel threatened to undo it all. “How determined are you to make the dragons into the villains? Is it the peace that you can’t bear, or the thought of the dragons being here to share it? Can you not forget, or can you just not forgive in the first place?”

Mildew opened his mouth to give some reply or other, but before he could say a word Stoick marched into the centre of the crowd and hauled Hiccup backwards. “Enough!” he barked.

For a moment, Hiccup almost defied him. Just once more, just for the dragons again. He had wanted to take the hand of each Viking and hold it for Toothless to accept him, but there was part of him now that wanted to sit Mildew in front of Toothless and show him that dragons had more mercy than most humans Hiccup had ever known. But he held his tongue and gritted his teeth, and let Stoick look around at the bared weapons, the curious onlookers, the points of ice still sticking up from the ground. There was ash on Hiccup’s hands.

“I have no doubt that what happened today was an accident,” he said, looking pointedly at Mildew and his followers, “but be that as it may it was a dangerous one. People could have been hurt.” Now he was looking directly at Hiccup, and though there was not quite the sense of disappointment there had once been, the grim resignation that had taken its place was not something which Hiccup was so used to dealing with. “We can’t leave the dragons unattended. When they’re not being flown, they need to go back into the arena.”

“What?” protested Hiccup, only dimly aware that Mildew was grumbling as well. “You can’t send them back into there! This wasn’t Toothless’s fault, it was just eel in with the other fish! Surely we should be the ones who–”

“ – _attended_?” Mildew was complaining. “The beast was attended this morning, for all the good that did. You can’t expect children to–”

“ _Silence_ , both of you,” said Stoick, and whether or not it was out of habit that Hiccup complied, even he was not sure. “Hiccup is right; we must take some responsibility for this, and perhaps it was a mistake to go forward so rapidly. It will not happen again. But we cannot discount what has been achieved with the dragons. Astrid, take the Night Fury and the Nadder up to the arena – the academy. I’ll have the others follow you.”

But Astrid stood sullenly still, and Hiccup grabbed hold of his father’s arm. “You can’t mean Toothless as well!”

“All of the dragons,” said Stoick, with a momentary glare.

“But there...” Hiccup fought for an argument. “There’s no pen for him.”

“The Monstrous Nightmare’s is the strongest, and the largest. They will have to go into that one.”

Not so strong anymore, with most of the bars pared away from the doors and the weights lifted off. The metal had been given over to making more important things, the old heavy pulley system adjusted and reworked so that any of them could throw the lever with one hand. Hiccup did not point that out, however, and merely looked at his father in horror as Astrid finally shoved her knife back into its sheath and walked back over to Stormfly.

Stoick sighed. “Mildew, go home. And that goes for the rest of you, as well,” he added to the onlookers. Some of them would have been there to support Mildew, but most likely more had simply been wondering what was going on, and it would not have been fair to start allotting blame to each of them. He did not look away until they started to break up, and even Mildew could not meet his eyes for long before muttering something into his beard and turning away.

“Dad...” said Hiccup quietly. He backed up until he could run a hand over Toothless’s snout, and feel the reassuring rumble of his breathing. “You can’t do this.”

“I have to, Hiccup,” said Stoick, and there was something about his voice which made Hiccup painfully aware that it was the chief, and not the father, who was speaking. “Come home, now. We’ll speak more there.”

Hiccup shook his head. “If Toothless goes to the academy, then so do I.”

“Hiccup...” Stoick groaned.

“No,” he said flatly. “I don’t know how long the effect of the eel might last. Whether there might be something more to come. I’m not leaving him.”

“Will you at least listen–”

“I’ll see you at the academy,” said Hiccup. In one smooth movement he slid into Toothless’s saddle, locked his foot into the pedal, and opened the fin. Toothless chirped, glancing back over his shoulder. “Come on, bud. One more short flight.”

Toothless obediently spread his wings. Before Hiccup could have time to regret it, they were in the air, snow stinging in his eyes and on his lips, and he turned them towards the rocky outcrop where the academy lay.

 

 

 

 

 

Astrid was the first one to reach them, landing at the doorway and sliding to the floor. She led Stormfly in by the bridle, though the Nadder was still glancing around nervously. “Your father isn’t happy,” she said to the empty arena.

“Is he ever?” As he spoke, she turned, and must have caught sight of him. He was sitting on the floor in what had been Meatlug’s pen, Toothless’s head on his lap even if that was ridiculously heavy. Toothless snuffled and rubbed his cheek against Hiccup’s stomach.

Leaving Stormfly in the main arena, Astrid stepped into the pen as well, pushing her hair back out of her eyes. “He’ll be here before too long. At least he didn’t send them away.”

“Toothless hasn’t been away from me since the Red Death,” said Hiccup. He let his hand rest on the back of Toothless’s neck, just above his shoulders and behind his fringe, where he could still feel the tension of the muscles. “And before that, he had Elsa. I’m not leaving him alone, now of all times.”

Astrid regarded him for a moment, hands on her hips and her head tilted. “What else is it?”

“I just... bah,” said Hiccup, shaking his head. “Two incidents with the dragons, and Mildew is there both times? It just feels like too much of a coincidence.”

Leaning against the wall of the pen beside him, Astrid folded her arms across her chest. The light was not good in here, even without the clouds and snow, and he could not see much of her expression from where he sat. “You know what your father will say. That Mildew is just making the most of any opportunity he can to speak out against the dragons.”

And what did Hiccup have? Elsa’s word that there were knife-marks in the sheep, a skinned eel, and his suspicions. Not enough for a hiccup, even one who was the son of the chief, to speak up against someone who had been a dragon-slayer once and who had lived on Berk and among its people for sixty years and more. “It just feels too neat,” he said.

“For him, maybe. An unholy mess, from our end.”

“You have a point.”

Hiccup let his head fall back against the rocky wall. He wished that he had a clue what to do, but this wasn’t something that could be solved with a blacksmith’s tools, or with a trollwort bracelet. It was harder to deal with the inside of people’s heads.

“Hiccup?” shouted Stoick, from outside. Grimacing, Hiccup started to push himself up to his feet, though Toothless murred in disappointment as he did so. “Astrid? Is Hiccup in there with you?”

Astrid straightened up and turned in the doorway. “Yes, chief.”

“I’m here, Dad,” said Hiccup wearily, stepping back out into the snow again. He set both hands on the head of his cane. “I’m sorry I ran off. Well, flew off.”

“I understand,” said Stoick. Hiccup had his doubts as to how much either of them actually believed that, but held his tongue. “I know this was an accident, never mind what Mildew was saying.”

A healthy eel, fully skinned. But it was too slender a thread to hang an accusation on. “Then why–”

“The dragons will be safer here, for now.”

Hiccup’s hand clenched into a fist. His father was right, of course; he had seen the axes and swords and angry faces today and before. It still didn’t make it right. “I’d rather be putting Mildew in the pens,” he said flatly.

To his surprise, his father snorted. “And you might not be the only one. But I hope it will only be for a short time. Until things are calmer again. Now come on, let’s head home.”

“I’m staying with Toothless,” said Hiccup again.

Stoick looked at him pointedly. “You’re coming home if I have to carry you, and hide your leg when we get there. Come on. Astrid can see the dragons safely into their pens.”

“Some of them won’t go in except for me.” Though he wasn’t sure whether it was exactly true, he did know that none of them yet had managed to persuade Hookfang or Stormfly to enter the pens, and that even going into the main arena again seemed to depend on their moods. This time, Hiccup did not back down from his father’s stern look, and eventually Stoick sighed.

“Fine. We’ll wait for them.”

 

 

 

 

 

Even if it wasn’t much time, Hiccup wanted it. He returned to his seat beside Toothless, wondering whether he would be able to sleep tonight without the slow sound of Toothless’s breathing from the far end of his room. He scratched gently around Toothless’s neck, earning a contented rumble and slight kneading from Toothless’s front paws, but his heart was not quite in it.

Stoick walked off, looking at the new doors and the new levers that controlled them, and once he was on the far side of the arena Astrid hunkered down beside Hiccup. “I can stay with them tonight, if you want.”

It wasn’t a case of a human being with the dragons; it was a case of the dragons being with the humans. But Hiccup wasn’t quite sure if he could explain that. “If you want to,” he said instead.

Astrid tucked her hair back out of her eyes. “We’ll still have them during the day. From tomorrow, at least. We can just spend the whole day up here instead.” She didn’t have to add, _if the weather is good enough_. This was Berk. If it was physically possible to open the doors, Vikings would be out and about.

He wanted to scream at the injustice of it all, scream or shout or cry and he really wasn’t sure which. After everything that the dragons had forgiven the humans for, Mildew and his ilk could not even forgive Toothless for eating something that made him sick.

Pressing her lips together, Astrid regarded him for a long moment, then looked up sharply and straightened up to look out of the pen. “The others are here,” she said.

“I hope someone bought dragon nip,” muttered Hiccup, getting to his feet again.

It transpired that Fishlegs had, sealed so tightly in a leather bag that the other dragons had not yet started bothering him for it. Or it could have been that it was still too early in the morning for that; Fishlegs was rubbing sleep from his eyes, and the twins were yawning too widely to do anything other than mumble insults at each other as they dismounted.

Hookfang was going to be the hardest, Hiccup suspected, and he got Toothless to settle down in the Monstrous Nightmare’s pen before trying to coax in the dragon himself. There was a wooden plaque over the door now, with the outline of a Nightmare carved into it, and the doors were an iron grille rather than the huge solid things they had once been. Even so, it took a lot of dragon nip and a fair bit of gentle pleading, gesturing at Snotlout to stay quiet, before Hookfang settled down and began to lick his wings again, and they closed the door as quietly as possible behind him.

When it came to Stormfly, Hiccup was glad that he had asked Astrid close the gate to the arena once they were all inside. She hopped around the arena, shrieking and snapping at them, until finally Astrid managed to talk her into the pen and Hiccup closed the door behind her. Stormfly continued to make her angry sounds and headbutted the door hard enough for it to rattle in its hinges; it stayed put, but Astrid winced and Hookfang started roaring as well.

“All right,” called Stoick above the gathering noise. Even Barf and Belch were starting to look awake enough to look concerned, and Meatlug was trying to huddle behind Fishlegs, Silversnap and Skyfire huddling between her front paws. “Let’s get this moving.”

From anyone other than his father, Hiccup would not have accepted such a comment. As it was, he gritted his teeth and concentrated on getting Barf and Belch into their new pen. Mercifully, they seemed as curious as they were wary, and were still sniffing at corners and poking at the new hinges when they were shut in.

Finally, Hiccup turned to Meatlug. “Come on, girl,” he said. She let him scoop up her hatchlings, keeping his arms around them tightly now to stop them from flying away, and waddled into the pen after him as he deposited them at the back. He slipped out of the door and Astrid closed it behind him, and he was not going to look back until Meatlug howled and one of the hatchlings came to settled on his shoulder.

Skyfire barrelled into Fishlegs and tried to hide beneath his vest. “It’s all right, baby,” he said. “You stay with your mother, now.”

“I’m sorry,” said Hiccup, peeling Silversnap off his shoulder again. He pointed the hatchling back in the direction of the pen. “Go on, go back in.”

Meatlug gave another mournful sound. Silversnap flew towards her, then stopped and looked back at Fishlegs hopefully.

“Shouldn’t have changed the doors,” Stoick grumbled.

The old doors had been so solid that no light or fresh air entered the pens. They had made them into cells, dark and dank and stinking, and Hiccup was glad to see them gone. Even if it meant that they couldn’t hold hatchlings – or, for that matter, the Terrible Terror living in the Hofferson’s house. “Look, they’ll stay with her,” he said, more confidently than he felt. “And it’s only for the nights. Tomorrow morning we can come and get them and go flying again.”

The second time around, he knew that he could not look back, or he would want to run back and hide beneath Toothless’s wings and refuse to leave them at all. When Toothless whined, Hiccup stopped for a moment, warring with himself, but his father’s hand came to rest between his shoulderblades and steered him out before he could break and do what was right.

 

 

 

 

 

It was still snowing when they got back to Berk, still light and more a nuisance than anything else. The village was awake – shouts drifted up from the wharves, smoke rose from chimneys, and Old Flounderson (no relation to Young Flounderson) was driving his sheep across town to what he considered the best winter grazing. It was, naturally, as far as possible from his own house.

“Fishlegs,” said Hiccup, as they reached the edge of town, “meet me at the Great Hall? Bring that book, and we’ll make a start.”

Fishlegs nodded eagerly, then looked across at Stoick with an increasingly wary expression.

“Book?” said Stoick.

“I owe Gobber a Book of Dragons,” said Hiccup. He was in no mood to be coy now, and not in the mood to eat either despite the pain in his gut. “And we’ve got more information to put in. I was going to head home and get my ink for the drawings. Is it all right if I borrow our Book for a starting point?”

“You said that you were coming home,” said Stoick.

Hiccup shrugged and waved vaguely around them. “I’m in Berk. That’s home. I’ll only be at the Great Hall.”

For a moment he saw something flicker in his father’s eyes, but as soon as it was there it was gone again, and he could not bring himself to ask. It felt wrong to not have Toothless as a black shadow in his peripheral vision, not to hear the soft pad of his feet or the rustle of his wings as he adjusted them. Like losing a leg that couldn’t be replaced with a prosthetic.

“All right,” said Stoick, more softly. “I’ll get Elsa to bring it over for you.”

Elsa as well. He had meant to speak to her, but had been drawn into a fight with Mildew and then stormed to the academy and back so quickly that he had not gotten the chance. Hiccup nodded, first to his father than to Fishlegs, and turned his steps towards the Great Hall.

“Does that mean we’re invited?” Tuffnut said in another of his bad whispers.

“I dunno,” said Ruffnut. Their voices became fainter as Hiccup continued walking away.

“I’m going home.” Snotlout sounded sullen, and slightly strangled, as if his throat was as tight as Hiccup’s felt. “Gotta... clean some weapons.”

Someone jogged lightly up beside him, and Hiccup did not even need to guess whether or not it was Astrid before she appeared beside him. “We’re all angry about this, Hiccup.”

“They sounded more upset than angry to me,” he replied, jerking his head in the vague direction of the others.

Astrid huffed. “Not _everyone_ expresses their anger like I do, you know.”

That, at least, made him smile a little. “Probably a good thing, or we wouldn’t have any trees left on the island.”

She punched him on the arm, but it was soft enough to hardly make him rock in place. “Exactly. We’ll get the dragons out somehow.”

“Thank you,” he said, finally turning to look at her. Astrid smiled, eyes looking bluer than usual with the sky all grey and white behind her. “Do you want to join us working on the new Book?”

“Sorry,” she replied, with a grimace. “I promised my mother I’d help her collect willow today, as long as the snow wasn’t too bad. This won’t count. I might be able to swing by later, though.”

“Sounds good.” Hiccup considered kissing her on the cheek, but before he could decide whether or not that was actually a good idea Astrid had dropped out of step with him and turned back towards the main body of the village, leaving him to continue the steps up to the Great Hall alone.


	5. Chapter 5

Fishlegs joined him shortly with the fresh book and his own supply of ink, and Elsa not long after with the borrowed copy of the Book of Dragons and some bread and crabapples upon which Stoick had apparently insisted. The crabapples looked rather brown and wrinkled, but still edible, and Hiccup didn’t really taste them anyway as he ate.

They had planned to re-write the introduction from scratch; this was a book to learn about _dragons_ now, and not just how to kill them. Despite his original lack of interest, Hiccup found himself getting drawn into the debate on how much space they should leave for the information which, they were all sure, they still had to learn. Or at least, Fishlegs and he debated, while Elsa watched with steady eyes like she was drinking in the new words that must have been scattered throughout the conversation.

Unless he looked over his shoulder, to where Toothless should have been lying, he could forget that half of himself was locked up in the pens.

As the day wore on, the snow turned to hail, and Astrid joined them red-cheeked and stomping mud off her boots. She was still dripping as she slid into place on the bench beside Elsa and peered over to see what the boys had produced. “Going well then, I see?”

They had reached the seventh page. “At this rate, we’ll get it done some time this decade is out,” said Hiccup. He straightened up, rubbing his eyes with his right hand and stretching out the stiffness in his left. “Want to give us a hand?”

“No, I think Fishlegs’s writing is better than mine,” Astrid replied. She looked at the latest pages, writing on the sixth and a drawing of Toothless curled along the base of the seventh. “And your drawing is, for that matter. Have you been having fun helping them?” she said, raising an eyebrow at Elsa.

Elsa gave her mildest look. “It has been an interesting day.”

“Which means that you’ve been helping break up arguments,” said Astrid. “Glad to hear that someone was.”

“We didn’t argue _that_ much,” Hiccup protested, but Astrid just laughed and kicked his good leg under the table. “All right, maybe we did. Should I ask how gathering the willow went?”

“We got some before the snow closed in. Looks like it might be a hard winter this year.”

“Talking about the weather is a common Berkian pastime,” said Hiccup, with a faux-conspiratorial look in Elsa’s direction.

She smiled. “I had noticed.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about the categories,” said Fishlegs, flicking through a few of the pages of Stoick’s copy of the Book. “They’re all based on the combat characteristics, and don’t take into account anything else. Do you really think that they’re all right in the long run?”

“Huh.” Hiccup slumped down, putting his chin in his hand. “You have a point. How else would you arrange them, though? We can’t very well just put all of them in one group.” The very idea of a Mystery Class was, he supposed, proof that the current system did not work very well. Mystery Class dragons were just ones that they did not know enough about – a sort of dumping ground for dragons which were known to exist more securely than just in Bork’s rumours, but for whom even the shot limit was often a mystery.

“We could do it by environment,” Fishlegs suggested.

“It’d be great if we knew how they were related to each other.”

Astrid shook her head, shifted to sit astride the bench, and started unravelling Elsa’s braid. Elsa started slightly, then sat still and allowed Astrid to work. “I think I’d rather be out in the snow,” Astrid muttered.

“Maybe by whether or not they’re _trainable_ ; though, we’d have to do research, and it might be hard to find some of the species...”

“Or–” Hiccup did a double-take as Astrid started to re-braid Elsa’s hair, weaving the white-blonde strands over and under each other. “Wait, what?”

“I like braiding hair,” said Astrid, daring him with a look to say anything. Then she gave a slightly feral grin. “Unless you want me to do yours.”

Hiccup’s hair turned into a shaggy mess before it even reached his shoulders, and it was going to need another cut before Snoggletog to make sure that it didn’t turn into a complete catastrophe. “Yeah, good luck with that,” he replied, tugging at a lock to demonstrate how short it still was. It didn’t do anything to quell Astrid’s smile, though, and he felt oddly concerned at the idea.

“Wait till you grow a beard,” Astrid continued. “That’ll be a sight to see.”

“I’ll get back to you in a couple of decades,” said Hiccup, rubbing his chin. Snotlout, of all people, was already starting to get stray hairs on his chin and talk about them proudly, but somehow Hiccup doubted that he was going to manage anything impressive in the beard area for some time. Possibly ever. Gobber had the shaving mirror all to himself in their house. “Unless someone knits me one for Snoggletog, of course.”

There had probably been weirder presents on Berk over the years, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

By the time that evening drew around again, they had started writing about Nadders, and Hiccup was trying to draw a picture of Stormfly with her tail arcing around the top of the page while both Fishlegs and Astrid critiqued his efforts. Heavily. All the same, it was _fun_ , trying to draw a dragon by popular consensus while Elsa watched with amusement and the people on the far side of the hall looked over in bewilderment at the occasional vehement comments about spines.

It was always easy to tell when the fishing boats had landed for the day by the rush of the fishermen and –women who entered, bringing with them bowls of stew made from the previous day’s catch and swapping stories among themselves. At first, the tables around Hiccup and the others remained empty, but as the Hall filled up and became warmer, as much from the press of bodies as from the fire, those tables filled as well.

“Working on something?” said a voice behind them, and Hiccup turned to find himself facing Snotlout’s mother, or more precisely her stomach. He quickly adjusted his gaze upwards.

“Mrs. Jorgenson! Yes, we were just, ah,” he gestured to the book. “Putting in some more information.”

Brynnhild the Beauty, she was called by those of her own generation, and even after three children – two surviving – it was possible to see why. Her hair was honey-blonde, some of the longest on the island, and her face comely. She looked over the picture with a critical eye, and nodded appreciatively. “Well, be sure to add in that Thunderdrums will chew through fishing nets to get at the fish inside. Three times this moon I’ve lost nets to the bugger!”

Though Hiccup winced, he was relieved that she did not much seem to hold it against the dragon, as if it were a nuisance and nothing more. A few moons ago, people would have been up in arms with plans to kill the beast. Then again, he supposed that three catches in a moon was little more than an irritation compared to the daily fear of losing everything that they had faced before.

“We’ll make sure to do that, Mrs. Jorgenson,” said Fishlegs dutifully.

She muttered appreciatively and went to sit with some of her fellow fishers. Behind her, Hiccup caught Astrid’s gaze and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. Well, he supposed there were worse conversations to have.

The evening wore on and, with no small regret, Hiccup bid a good evening to the others and started to head home. The first time that he heard footsteps behind him, he thought for a moment that it was Toothless and turned with an amazed smile, which faltered when he saw Elsa there.

“Sorry,” he said, realising that his fading smile probably looked like he was disappointed to see her. That was only the case compared to his dragon. “Thought you were Toothless for a moment.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

Hiccup had never really needed to slow to let people walk next to him. It was snowing again, thick and soft, though it seemed to swirl a little less in the few feet around Elsa and Hiccup. He didn’t want to upset her by mentioning it, though, and held his tongue. “Sorry. We got very dragon-focused again today.”

That made Elsa chuckle. “I have said that I do not mind. I am happy to hear you talk. Hear your words.”

He smiled fondly. The steps were slippery underfoot, and he had to stick his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on the way down, but he was getting better at them as long as he went down good foot first. “It’s been very... dragons, lately,” he said, as they reached the bottom of the slope. “I’m sorry about that, as well.”

“It is good to see the dragons here,” said Elsa. He had to watch her lips to be sure of the words, so quietly did she speak.

“And you,” said Hiccup. He stepped across, reaching out to take her hand, but she folded her hands in front of her again, one hand wrapping tightly around the other wrist. Her fingers plucked at the trollwort. “I mean it. I’m glad that you’re here. You are...” for a moment he could not bring himself to say it, and the snow getting in his mouth did not help much either. He stopped just outside the door to his house, putting a hand across the doorway so that Elsa could not step straight inside. “Elsa.” She looked around. “You are happy here, aren’t you?”

Elsa paused, eyes on the door, and leant one hand against the wooden frame. “Happier,” she said. Even as he was impressed with how her Northur had developed, he felt a pang at how carefully she spoke. She placed the word precisely between them.

“I... I know we’re not perfect,” he said.

But, surely, they had to be better than the life she had faced before. A bed and food and clothing should not have been so much of an improvement, but it was. A new language, and people who did not fear her... he hoped that those were worth more.

“You might be,” she replied.

The door was pulled open so abruptly that Hiccup almost fell in, and looked up to see Gobber in the doorway and looking rather surprised to see them. “Ah, there you are. Was just wondering if I needed to go up to the Great Hall to find you.”

“No, Elsa and I managed to trek that far,” said Hiccup.

Gobber peered over their shoulders, into the darkening sky and the thickening snow. “Give it much longer and it will be a trek. Come on, let’s get some warm food into the pair of you.”

 

 

 

 

 

It took a long time to get settled in his bed, the blankets feeling irrationally cold. Curling his arm underneath his pillow and his knees up to his chest, Hiccup drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep. He dreamt that he was burning, that he could see the flames on his body and feel them eating at his flesh, but the blackness did not wipe them out this time. He dreamt that he was falling, or perhaps that Toothless was, both of them pinwheeling away from each other into silver-grey nothingness.

Pain shot through his leg, and he awoke in darkness clutching at it. For a moment his skin felt burning hot beneath his hands, then the sensation was gone, and only the sweat on his brow and the pounding of his heart remained of the nightmare. Groaning, Hiccup dropped his head to his knee, waiting for the shaking in his hands to go away.

He wanted to call Toothless over, hear his rumble in the darkness and touch his dry, warm skin. But Toothless was far away, sharing his pen with Hookfang, beneath the snow-covered academy walls.

As he became more awake, he realised that there was a faint light still coming from downstairs. Stoick had banked the fire overnight, with the winter starting to roll in. Hiccup wrapped one of his blankets around his shoulders and stood up, clinging to the wall as he hopped over to the doorway and made his way carefully down the stairs.

“Hiccup.”

The sound of his name made him look up sharply, almost at the bottom of the stairs. Elsa was sitting beside the fire, also wrapped in a blanket, her hair loose and tangled over her shoulders.

“Hey,” he said quietly. Between the wall and Stoick’s chair, it wasn’t too hard to hop over to the bench and slide onto it, scooting over to sit next to Elsa. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Elsa shook her head.

“Yeah, me neither.” He hugged the blanket around himself. Above the popping and crackling of the fire, he could hear the gusting wind outside, but he could feel the cold rolling off Elsa and see points of ice scattered through her hair. “It was the Red Death. I think.” Already his dreams were becoming dimmer, fading to the sensation of falling and heat on his skin. “What about you?”

“In the Wildlands, they used to say that you should let go of your dreams. To forget them.” There were shadows beneath Elsa’s eyes again, made darker by the same tricks of the fire that sharpened her cheekbones and made her hair look gold. Her knuckles were white where she clutched at the blanket.

“Here, we say that if you tell a dream, it won’t come true,” Hiccup replied. “Then again, Gobber says that if you feed parsnips to a goat, it can sing, so it might not be worth putting _too_ much stock in Viking stories.”

Elsa smiled sadly. “I was a child again. But the whole island was freezing around me. Snow on the ground and trees covered in ice. There were no people, just icy statues.”

“It didn’t happen,” he promised. “I’m sorry for what did, but... you’re here now.”

Outside, the wind groaned, but the house was solidly built and Hiccup knew that it would be fine. Elsa looked up sharply at the sound, and he suspected that the drop in the temperature around them was her magic instead. “Winter is coming in,” she said quietly.

“Well, it does every year,” said Hiccup. He wished that he knew what he could say to reassure her. “And then spring rolls around afterwards.”

They lapsed into silence again, and Hiccup rubbed at the stump of his left leg. The scar tissue was settling evenly, not knotting up, but the cold was making it ache anyway and this evening was the worst that it had been in a while. Strange, but he couldn’t really remember now what it had felt like when it had burnt. Stranger was the fact that he had dim memories of how it had smelled, like normal meat cooking over the fire.

“Your leg is hurting?” Elsa asked.

When Hiccup nodded, she reached out her hands towards his leg. He allowed her to take hold of it, hands chilly against his skin and almost painful, but soothing after a moment. Propping himself up on his arm, he grimaced as her fingers traced over his skin. “Thank you,” he said.

“It is strange,” said Elsa, looking almost as if she were addressing his leg. “Sometimes the things that are not there... are the things that hurt the most.”

She sounded much older than him, just in that moment, so much older than she was. It struck Hiccup that although Elsa had talked about her time in the Wildlands, she had not spoken much about her time before. “What was it like, in Arendelle?”

Elsa hesitated, before shrugging. “I do not remember much. My parents. My bedroom. A large hall, full of snow and ice. My sister.”

The tenderness in her voice gave it away. The missing piece that hurt the most. “What was she like?” asked Hiccup.

Eyes drifting to the fire, Elsa smiled gently. “She was younger than me. Always wanted to play. To build snowmen. She wanted to learn to ride a horse, and to box. She used to take my clothes, even though they were too big for her, and pretend to be me.”

“Sounds like she got you into trouble.”

The twins always blamed each other, and Fishlegs despaired of Froglegs and Piglegs for bickering with each other and trying to compete. But as Elsa thought of her sister, her face softened, her smile finally reaching her eyes and hair falling loosely around her cheeks. “We both did. One time, we took swords to fight with. They were so heavy we could barely lift them.”

“Sounds like me nowadays,” said Hiccup flippantly. A cheap joke, but Elsa chuckled all the same. He could picture two young girls with Arendellen swords – longer, thinner, more pointed than Viking ones – trying to swordfight in the flourishing way that Arendellen duellists did. He wondered if Elsa’s younger sister shared her striking hair.

In an instant, though, Elsa’s smile crumbled, and she turned her face away from Hiccup. He pushed himself upright and shifted closer, putting his arm around her to stop her from sliding away. Her breath caught, and he saw the glitter of tears on her cheek, but she kept looking to the side as if she were trying to hide her tears from him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to...”

Elsa shook her head. “It was not you. The woman who found me...” she took a deep breath. “She said it was better to forget. That it was no use to remember. But I don’t want to forget my sister.”

Finally she looked round, and there were tracks of tears down her face and redness around her eyes. Lips trembling, Elsa looked at Hiccup almost beseechingly, and he felt like he was sliding from the younger sibling to the older in a heartbeat. Impulsively, he grabbed Elsa and hugged her tightly; she stiffened at first, with a strangled sound deep in her throat, then her head came to rest on his shoulder and her arms wrapped around him in return.

It had been meant to be comforting, but he realised that he was clinging to her in return. Ice stung on his cheek, then melted away, and Hiccup shifted his weight so that it was less uncomfortable against his left leg.

“You know,” he mumbled into Elsa’s hair, “my father would probably lock me in my room if he saw this.”

With a breathless laugh, Elsa pulled away and sat up again, tucking her hair back behind her cheek. Her blanket had fallen around her, draping on the floor. Hiccup had goosebumps on his arms, but he just tugged his own blanket a little tighter around him and glanced over at the fire to make sure it was still going strongly. It would still be a few hours until daylight.

“He means well,” she said.

“I think he’s trying to protect my virtue,” said Hiccup. It put him in mind of Arendelle again, of the way that some of its young women were treated like china dolls, prim and proper and possessions. It was very _southern_ , Stoick had said, although it had taken Hiccup many years to understand that _southern_ meant more than just being on the southern end of the island which it shared with Berk. It meant different clothes and swords and music and food, and clinging to concepts like virtue rather than trusting the young people to whom they were being applied. “Maybe he should put me in a tower and get a dragon to protect me.”

“Ah,” Elsa replied, “but what type of dragon?”

Hiccup laughed, and the buffeting wind outside seemed less overwhelming for a moment. “Hopefully a friendly one. It would get boring in the tower otherwise.”

“I don’t remember any stories where the princess made friends with the dragon.”

“Maybe we should write that in the new Book. New dragon fairy tales. Odin knows we’ve got a lot of new stories to tell.”

 

 

 

 

 

Hiccup woke up with the sun in his eyes, cold air slipping under his blanket, and Gobber poking him with his wooden hand. Blinking sleep from his eyes, he rolled over onto his back, and promptly slithered down onto the floor in a tangle of blankets.

“Gobber,” he said, making it sound a little bit like a curse. He tried to extricate his legs from the blanket, or at least kick it off, but mostly succeeded in looking like a fish on a beach instead.

Shaking his head, Gobber reached down and grabbed Hiccup under the armpits, pulling him up and depositing him back on the bench again. “Good morning to you too. Care to explain what you’re doing down here?”

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Came downstairs. Couldn’t be bothered to hop back up again.”

Apparently it was enough of an explanation for Gobber, who just nodded and walked back towards the pantry. Hiccup realised that he had managed to acquire a second blanket somewhere during the night. He couldn’t even remember falling asleep, though he might have been leaning on Elsa’s shoulder when he did so. “Where’s Dad?”

“Well’s frozen. He and Jorgenson are trying to work out how to break the ice.”

“Well, you know, I can think of one way,” said Hiccup. His hair fell into his eyes, and he tried to push it back again only to fail completely. It sprang back into view again. “Dragons are pretty good at melting ice.”

Gobber looked at him pointedly.

“Just saying,” said Hiccup. He looked around for his foot, then remembered that he had not bothered with it the night before. “It could help.”

“Breakfast first,” said Gobber. “Dragons later. You hardly touched the mutton stew last night.”

“I wasn’t that hungry,” Hiccup muttered. The mutton stew was not at its best right before slaughtering season anyway, but not having anyone to throw the gristle to had spoiled it even more. “Just let me get Toothless, and I’ll eat.”

Gobber laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “I’m not getting your leg until you eat,” he said firmly, and before Hiccup could protest added: “And I’ll be telling Elsa the same thing. Now make yourself fit to be seen.”

He rapped on the doorframe to the once-workshop and continued back towards the pantry. “We’ve got some honey left, or the last of that quince preserve, if you want.”

“Whatever you’d prefer,” said Hiccup. He chucked Elsa’s blanket back in the vague direction of her room, put the other one over his shoulder, and stood up again. He was still mentally weighing up whether it would be faster to crawl or hop up the stairs when Gobber backtracked into view and looked at him sternly. “Fine, fine.”

He swung over to the table instead and sank down, sitting on his right leg out of habit to make sure that he could reach the surface easily. “I was going to go for another flight today. Scout eastwards some.”

“Don’t go within sight of the other islands,” said Gobber warningly. “Or boats from other islands, for that matter. Things are hard enough here, don’t want to go dragging other islands into it.”

“You’d have to be mad to be out this late in the season.”

“We are Vikings, Hiccup.”

Well, he had a point there. Hiccup made another attempt to flatten his hair, or at least tame it somewhat, but was left with the same rather questionable results. He heard the swish of the curtain to Elsa’s room and looked round in time to see her emerge, already dressed and with her hair pulled back. The bags under her eyes suggested that she had not slept since he had seen her in the middle of the night.

“Good morning,” she said.

Hiccup waved vaguely, in lieu of managing an actual greeting, and leant his elbow on the table. In front of anyone else, it would probably still embarrass him to be seen in just his night shirt, but even Stoick had mostly given up on trying to stop Elsa from being subjected to the sight. Throwing a blanket in Hiccup’s direction was the major concession that he made nowadays.

“Ah, good morning,” said Gobber, returning with a pot of porridge and hanging it over the fire. “Were you planning on going on Hiccup’s little jaunt today as well?”

Elsa paused beside the table, looking from Gobber to Hiccup and back with a questioning expression. “Jaunt?”

“Trip,” Hiccup supplied. “I was going to just... fly, today.”

Yesterday felt like it had been longer than it really had. As if he had spent hours huddled in the cove with Toothless, waiting for Elsa and Astrid to come back with the other half of his solution. He needed to feel the air again, the beat of Toothless’s wings, the whistle of the wind and the bite of the rain. Needed to fly.

Elsa settled delicately into place at the table, averting her eyes again. Her fingers twisted into her bracelets. “I do not think so, thank you.”

Even Gobber gave her a glance as he crossed to the fire again, swapping his poker hand for her a ladle, but he did not speak. Hiccup reached across to look at Elsa’s bracelets, but she drew her hands away abruptly. The trollwort looked more worn than before. When he tried to catch her gaze, Elsa kept her eyes fixed firmly on the table, and eventually Hiccup gave up and sat straight again. “What’s up with those?”

She shrugged. “I do not know. Perhaps it is...”

“Is the magic wearing it away?” he spoke carefully, trying to phrase it in as neutral a way as possible. It didn’t matter, the magic. No more than Astrid’s axes needed re-sharpening more often than most people’s did, or Gobber’s left boot wearing down faster than other peoples’. Elsa flinched slightly beneath the words, though, and gave only a minute nod. “We can make more, if you want. If that would help.”

Bowls of porridge were pushed onto the table in front of them. The temperature of the air dropped a fraction, and Hiccup put the thought aside for the time being to turn sheepishly towards Gobber. “Did everything work out all right, yesterday? The fires?”

“Everything got put out, don’t you worry. Nothing major.”

Considering the amount of damage that Toothless had done back when they had still fought against dragons, that was a good thing. Hiccup wondered whether it had been a struggle to keep his power down to a minimum like that, and felt another pang in his chest. “Good to hear,” he said quietly.

Stoick returned as they were half-way down their porridge, though Hiccup was spending a lot of time pushing it around the bowl, and could not really taste it. He could not even have said whether Gobber had gone for the honey or the preserve. Still scowling, Stoick closed the door heavily behind him and brushed snow out of his beard, scanning the room grimly.

“Got the well cleared?” said Gobber.

“Aye, just about,” replied Stoick. “We’re hauling up chunks of ice with it, though. Pity we’re not closer to the hot springs.”

Giving up on breakfast, Hiccup pushed his bowl to the centre of the table and considered himself lucky that his father had not noticed his state of underdress. “We do get the fresher water though. Without the sulphur taste.”

Sighing, Stoick removed his helmet and pressed his hand to his temple. “I’d want a block of ice, if it weren’t ice giving me the headache,” he grumbled. Knowing better than to comment, the others were noticeably silent as he wound through the room and disappeared into his bedroom behind. The door clattered closed behind him again.

That would probably be a good time to make an escape. Hiccup wriggled out from behind the table and wound his way to the bottom of the stairs, glancing over his shoulder to see Gobber giving him a disapproving look but not saying anything.

It had seemed too much effort, in the middle of the night, to put on his foot. He had apparently not been thinking about how much work it would be to get upstairs again without it. Cursing Red Deaths and prosthetics and everything in between, Hiccup made his way back up the stairs, reaching the top just as he heard the bedroom door open again and his father emerge.

“Mildew’s up in arms again,” said Stoick.

As quietly as he could, Hiccup slid onto his bed and started putting on his leg, all but holding his breath to listen. Stoick settled heavily into one of his chairs and sighed.

“People angry again?” said Gobber.

“More scared than angry, I think. Gladioli burnt her arm trying to put out one of the fires, though that’s probably the worst of it. A new timber or two needed here and there. It’ll take a couple of days to fix everything properly.”

“Could have been worse. Especially if that’s the only incident in a good couple of moons.”

“I am aware of that, Gobber,” said Stoick sharply. Hiccup flinched at the familiar tone as he started to dress, opting for a warm vest and a cloak. Toothless might enjoy the high flights, but they could get cold and breathless. “But telling people to not mind what has happened is hardly a good way to appease them.”

Gobber said nothing, which was often his way of apologising, but Elsa’s silence worried Hiccup a little more. He flexed his left leg to chase out the stiffness, then stood up again, grabbing his cane and his comb at the same time. Comb between his teeth, he walked more steadily back down the stairs, to see Stoick look round almost guiltily at the sight of him.

“Are you taking the others?” said Gobber, taking the ladle off his left hand and rubbing the join between arm and prosthetic. When Hiccup gave him a look of polite enquiry, he added: “The dragons. And presumably those friends of yours as well.”

“It’d be good to let them stretch their wings as well,” said Hiccup. He glanced over to his father, but Stoick was rubbing his forehead and his expression was unreadable. “If that’s all right?”

“I’d stay away from the village,” said Stoick finally, but it sounded more like advice than an order. “And don’t let the dragons go anywhere without you.”

At least that wasn’t too bad. Hiccup’s anger softened slightly as he reached the bottom of the stairs, leant his cane against the wall and made another attempt to tame his hair. Dragons were easier. “Thanks, Dad,” he said, just softly enough for Stoick to look round and meet his eyes for a moment. He nodded.

The dragons needed him, needed a voice to stand up to Mildew and Mudbreath and the others who were too scared or too set in the old ways to be able to consider letting the dragons into the village. The peace was good for the humans, but it must have been remarkable for the dragons – every time there was an attack, dragons were killed, their carcasses skinned for their hides and defleshed for their bones. Humans had less injury, less lost food; dragons had less death. And somehow, Hiccup of all people had become the one to speak for them, the village’s disappointment with too many thoughts and too little muscle.

After last night, though, he wanted to spend time with Elsa. Berk had been better for her than the cove, a settled life better than running and hiding, but she still shied from strangers, and her magic was still lashing out around her. He wasn’t sure that she had much more of a voice than the dragons did. If this was what chiefing felt like, then he wasn’t sure that he liked that all that much either.

“See you later, Elsa?” said Hiccup carefully.

She gave him a careful smile. “Yes, later. I will be all right.”

He wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to reassure.


	6. Chapter 6

He didn’t mean to leave the others behind when they went flying, but it seemed that Toothless had ideas of his own. Before Hiccup knew it, the air was cutting around them, the sea below a blur of green-blue-grey, and he was breathless with surprise and thrill once again. Toothless rolled in the air, great swoops that plunged through the clouds and back again, down until the tips of his wings skimmed the sea and sent up fine sprays of water.

It felt like they could cut through the sky. It felt _free_. But Hiccup’s stomach still twisted with the knowledge that he would have to put Toothless behind the door of the pen once again tonight.

Berk was the most south-western of the Viking settlements, the closest to the dragon nest and the one which took the full blow of the wind and tides from its exposed position. It was small, under-populated, and at the far distance of a hell of a lot of open sea. The nearest inhabited land – other than Arendelle – was Outcast Island, and the currents made it far easier to go towards Outcast Island than away from it. The sea over which they flew would have been bad enough for boats even when it was not choppy, but with winter closing in it would be a fool’s errand to sail it. Hiccup had only meant to come this way because it would be empty.

Here and there, smaller islands thrust up from the sea, mostly rocky spires or sharp-edge plateaus. Toothless gave a shriek at the sight of one of them and plunged down towards it.

“What is it, bud?” Hiccup tried to shout, but even pressed against Toothless’s back he wasn’t sure whether he was audible. “Is something wrong?”

Toothless dove, wings tucked in, so low that Hiccup started to feel the rise of fear in his throat before the wings around him snapped open and he opened the tail for them to come in for a softer landing. He staggered out of the saddle, pushing his damp hair back off his face, and turned to face his dragon.

“What was that about, bud?”

Huffing, Toothless stamped on the ground with both forepaws, plates flaring around his head. Despite himself, Hiccup smiled at the image.

“What?”

He looked around them. This island didn’t look any different from the others, just an upthrust of granite with that curious hexagonal pattern that could be seen from time to time across the archipelago, with a scattering of pine trees up on the ridge above them. There had to be any number of islands like this around here.

Chittering caught his attention, and he turned to see an orange Terrible Terror sitting on the rocks behind him at head height. It cocked its head to look at him, and licked its eye.

“Hey there, buddy,” said Hiccup softly. He held out his hand to the Terror, which proceeded to sniff him thoroughly and try to shove its nose up his sleeve. “You live here, huh?”

A blue Terror, with brown markings on its back, pattered over the ridge to join the first, which hissed and jumped down to hide behind Hiccup’s ankle. The blue dragon sniffed Hiccup as well, then climbed up his arm and deposited itself on his shoulder without a sound of warning. Hiccup almost staggered, not so much from the weight as from the unexpected digging in of claws all up his arm.

“Whoa! Well, nice to meet you guys as well,” said Hiccup. He turned to face Toothless, who was now sitting with his usual curious expression and apparently watching the Terror licking Hiccup’s ear. “That why you bought us here, bud? Let me meet some more Terrors?”

The Terror at ground level tested its teeth on Hiccup’s metal foot, to judge by the gentle tug and the squawk of protest. Toothless spat a tiny fireball to the ground at Hiccup’s feet, sending the orange Terror skittering away again.

Something stirred and, frowning, Hiccup glanced around them again. The trees looked a little different, even if they were evergreen, but he had seen this place before. “Not so fireproof on the inside,” he muttered to himself. “That was here. This was where we figured it out.”

He smiled at Toothless, who padded forwards and rubbed his head against Hiccup’s chest. Hiccup ducked underneath to wrap his arms around Toothless’s neck, feeling as well as hearing the rumble as he sank in against the warm, smooth shoulder.

Suddenly, the world went dark around them, and Hiccup pulled away slightly with a strangled sound. Toothless chirped and breathed warm on Hiccup’s face in the darkness. Slowly, his eyes adjusted, and he realised that there was still faint light around them, enough for him to see Toothless’s eyes and the lines of his bones in the shadow of his wings. Laughing, Hiccup ran his hands over Toothless’s cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Toothless,” he said, sobering again. “My Dad probably is right that it’s safest for you guys to be there right now.”

Or at least it would be, if there was someone keeping an eye on them. Doors or no, Hiccup was not too sure that he liked the idea of leaving the dragons unattended at the academy. All that it would take would be someone with a crossbow to get the wrong idea into their head, and... no, he could not think like that. They would have to take it in turns to keep an eye on the dragons. Surely his father would understand that.

“You gonna let me out, bud?” added Hiccup, glancing at the wings furled around them. The light coming through them was faint, not the terrible stark fire of the Red Death, and he blinked away the memory. As if in reply, Toothless murmured, paused, and then licked Hiccup’s face enthusiastically.

Hiccup stumbled back, sputtering on Night Fury spit, and Toothless parted his wings around them to let the daylight back in again. It seemed astonishingly bright after being in the shelter of dragon wings, and markedly colder as well. Hiccup squinted, but managed not to shiver.

“We should probably get back to the others,” he said. As much as he would like to stay here with a Terror on one shoulder and another one now wrapping itself around his good ankle, Astrid would probably be calling curses down upon his head, Fishlegs would be getting concerned, and Snotlout would be making plans to declare himself the new heir of the chief. The twins may or may not have noticed yet. “What do you say, bud?”

Toothless snorted, furling his wings and showing absolutely no indication that he wanted to get up from where he had plunked himself on his hindquarters as if he was sitting down. He looked up, and Hiccup followed his gaze to see two small Terrors – hatchlings, perhaps – chasing a full-size one through the air above them. One of them had uneven wings, the left side smaller than the right and not flapping as fast, and it struggled to keep up with the others but made a good attempt of it all the same.

With a sigh, Hiccup went to unwind the blue Terror from his shoulder, but as he wrapped his hands around it, its tail snaked around his neck in return. “Hey!” he protested. “Cut that out!”

It was not said in anger, though; he was struggling not to laugh as he tried to disentangle himself from the little dragon which seemed to have taken such a liking to him. He finally managed to get it off his neck, only for it to wrap itself around his arm and give him a hopeful chirp, looking at him with wide eyes. Hiccup sighed and scratched it beneath the chin.

“I can’t go taking more dragons back to Berk,” he told the Terror, with some regret. “We’re having enough problems getting the current ones settled.”

Though, he had to admit, the Terrible Terror had escaped being locked up overnight. Perhaps it was easy to overlook a dragon that small, or perhaps it had hidden itself very well within the Hofferson house. Hiccup was just wheedling his arm out and persuading the dragon back onto the ridge when the sound of larger wings caught his attention and he looked round, shading his eyes, to see Astrid coming in to land.

“We wondered where you’d got to,” she said, taking in the scene. The blue Terror took advantage of the lapse in Hiccup’s attention to scuttle back up to his shoulder again. “You shot off like an arrow.”

“I think Toothless needed to stretch his wings,” said Hiccup. It didn’t sound like the most convincing of explanations, even to him. “We... it doesn’t matter. Is everyone all right?” Part of him wanted to keep this place for just him and Toothless, a fragment of the secret that they had shared for so long, and his mouth had felt dry at the thought of speaking about it.

Astrid shifted her weight in her saddle, lips pressing together. “We caught sight of a boat. Out to the east. The others are staying where they can see it through the spyglasses.”

“ _What_?” Hiccup spoke and turned so abruptly that he freed his arm from the Terror and even Toothless stepped forwards with a rumble. “What in Thor’s name would a boat be doing out at this time of year?”

“Search me,” said Astrid. “But it was showing Berkian sails. Patched, but still ours.”

Berkian sails did not necessarily mean that there was a Berkian at the helm of the boat, but it was considered a crime by many to fly the sails of another island in order to deceive them. The problem was that crimes didn’t matter all that much to people like the Outcasts, who were already criminals to begin with.

Hiccup sighed. “We should check that out. You said the others had a spyglass.”

“Two, actually,” said Astrid, and produced another from the pouch on her belt as well. “And I’ve got this one with me.”

“Maybe I should stop making so many of those things,” Hiccup muttered. He stepped over to Toothless, who finally stood up and shook his shoulders, making the membranes of his wings rustle. The leather of the saddle was still warm beneath him, for a long time now more comfortable than any wooden chair.

With a final wave of her own spyglass, Astrid tucked it away again. “You can’t stop yet. I’m sure there are a few sheep that don’t have a matching pair.”

He tried to give her a pointed look, but wasn’t sure how successful it was considering that a smile was still lurking at the edge of Astrid’s lips. Opening the tail, he felt Toothless bound into the air, wings spreading so fast that they almost clipped Astrid on the head along the way. She protested, and followed him into the air to draw alongside.

“So, are you going to let me lead?” she shouted across. “Or can you tell guess where this boat is?”

“You might need to tell that to Toothless,” he replied, but sat lazily back in the saddle in the hope that Toothless would get the message and not disappear off into the distance again.

Mercifully, Toothless did stay down to Stormfly’s speed as Astrid led the way back to the others. They had landed on another of the small islands, where Hookfang was steadily pulling branches off one of the lone pine trees while Meatlug hovered in place a little higher than the others.

Toothless gently came in to land on one of the more ragged peaks of rock, wrapping all four paws around it and keeping his wings partially flared. Stormfly did not even land, but stayed hovering beside them, not far above sea level.

“I hear you guys have seen something,” said Hiccup, by way of greeting. He had only intended this to be a flight, had only called it ‘scouting’ in front of Gobber to make it sound a little less like wasting time. Actually finding something was not a thing that he had particularly anticipated. He held out a hand. “And that you’ve got spyglasses.”

Not one but two were immediately throw in his direction – one gently by Fishlegs, one hard by Snotlout. Hiccup caught the one from Fishlegs in his left hand, and managed to throw his right in front of Snotlout’s to knock it back onto the island and stop it from vanishing into the sea. Someone sniggered, but Hiccup was not going to dignify it by trying to work out who it was. Taking a deep breath, he sighted on the flicker of sail on the horizon and lifted the spyglass to his eye.

The ship was right at the limit of what he could see. The sail was indeed Berkian, with the dragon emblem, greying and patched on one side but still visible. He could see two figures moving around, one adult and one child to judge by their sizes. The wind was still gusting, but was more westerly than south-westerly as it would usually be and they would probably be able to make headway.

Hiccup lowered the spyglass. He wished that he could make it more powerful, would have to put some thought into the possibilities of that. “Looks Berkian,” he said. “But we should let my father know. I don’t think we’re expecting anyone this late in the season.”

It was not too uncommon for people to go sailing for a season, or even a year or two, around the archipelago. Those who had skills or jobs that travelled well were particularly likely to do so. There were a few people out at the moment, even a couple of small families, but Hiccup was not aware of any of them that had sent messages that they would be returning this fall.

“Come on,” he said, tossing the spyglass carefully back to Fishlegs. “Let’s head back to Berk.”

He tried not to linger on the petty thought of proving that the dragons were good for Berk, but he had to admit that this was there. If this had been a hostile ship, Berk would have had no warning until it was within sight of the shores, but as it was they would have several hours at least. And without any risk to people or dragons.

“Urgh,” groaned Tuffnut. “You got us to _work_.”

And, of course, there was that. Hiccup rolled his eyes but smiled as Toothless took to the air once again.

 

 

 

 

 

Hiccup went to land outside the Great Hall before remembering that he was not supposed to any more. Frowning, he drew up in the air so sharply that Barf and Belch almost crashed into him from behind, and Toothless gave an irritated shriek. “Back to the academy, guys,” he shouted wearily.

It didn’t surprise him that Toothless resisted slightly as he turned them back towards the academy. It was not overt, not an outright struggle, but he could feel the tension in the lines of Toothless’s body and the beat of his wings. “It’ll be safer,” said Hiccup softly. “I promise, bud.”

Getting the dragons back into their pens proved to be an even worse struggle. Toothless went into Hookfang’s pen and lay down with a glower before flicking his tail over his face, but flames spread along Hookfang’s back as soon as Snotlout landed, and he reared up with a roar and a great flare of his wings. Astrid had to fight to keep Stormfly from taking off again.

“Whoa!” shouted Hiccup, trying to run back out and ending up stumbling instead. He dug in the end of his cane to walk as quickly as he could. “Come on, Hookfang, it’s all right. It’s only going to be for a little bit, and we’ll come back again.”

“Can you imagine having to live in a pen?” said Tuffnut. “I’d hate it. At least, I think I’d hate it. Could I have curtains?”

“You should totally live in a pen,” Ruffnut told him.

“Not helping!” Hiccup shot a glare at them both, then ran his free hand down over his face. “You know what? You guys stay here with the dragons. Fishlegs, why don’t you talk to the others about what you’ve learnt about the Gronckles? I’ll go and talk to my Dad.”

“I’m coming,” said Astrid, slipping down from Stormfly’s saddle.

He tried to wave her away. “No, you stay with Stormfly. She needs you.”

“She’ll be all right,” she replied. She ran a hand down Stormfly’s neck with a proud, fond sort of smile. “She can handle some time with the others. And you need someone to stop you falling off the cliff-path.”

“Thanks,” said Hiccup. He spared another look at Toothless, still sulking in the shade of Hookfang’s pen. “Come on. While there’s a gap in the weather.”

The air was cold and crisp, but it was not raining just yet, and the path back to the village would be dry for the time being. Getting to and fro was easier by dragon, but then again it had been easier with two legs as well. Hiccup found that he was, at least, having to concentrate less on the ground. It made talking easier.

“So, how long do you think your father is going to keep the dragons locked up?” said Astrid, as they rounded the first bend away from the academy.

“I don’t know,” Hiccup admitted. “It depends on how long people take to calm down, maybe. But people are just going to stay scared of the dragons if they don’t see them.”

Astrid kicked a stone along the path, until it skittered off the edge and disappeared away over the cliff. “Well, we’ve still got the Terrible Terror. And maybe he’ll let the hatchlings come back.”

“I don’t want to separate Meatlug from her hatchlings,” said Hiccup, feeling his throat constrict slightly just at the thought. Even with his father there, he had felt the hollow ache in the household, seen the shadows that had fallen across Stoick. Dragons though Silversnap and Skyfire might be, he did not want to separate them from their mother.

He heard Astrid sigh as she turned it over in her mind. “What happened with Hoark... I’m surprised that didn’t convince people.”

“Some people only see what they want to.”

“What if we showed more people what they could do?” she said. “We could get them to fix up some of the houses next time it needs doing.”

Only dragon attacks or the worst of the storms were enough to take damage rooves and the like, but it was an idea. Hiccup made a vague noise of agreement.

“Or hunting. We could use them for hunting, surely?” Astrid punched him lightly on the arm. “Round up a few boar. We know that animals run away from dragons, right?”

“They were probably taking boar back when they were attacking,” he said. “I mean, if they went after the sheep and the yaks, they must have gone for boar as well, right?”

“The smaller ones, maybe,” said Astrid. “The ones that could get through the trees.”

That was a point. The yaks had only ever been the province of Nightmares and Zipplebacks, dragons powerful enough to lift them. A large wild boar might well have been beyond the Gronckles or Nadders that could most easily fit between the trees. And Toothless had never taken food. But that didn’t mean that females or piglets would have been out of the question. “My Dad’s been talking about another hunt. The last one turned up a few deer, but no boar.”

“Fireballs would burn the hides,” she continued. “Maybe damage the organs. The spines could work, though. Or just herding them.”

“If we used a pit, we could hunt solo,” said Hiccup. “Well, I mean, we wouldn’t need any of the hunters. Drive the boar into the pit, a few well-placed spears or quarrels...”

“And there’s boar meat for the winter,” concluded Astrid. “You see? We do make a good team.”

He had to laugh, even as Berk came back into sight again. “Yeah, I suppose we do.”

 

 

 

 

 

His father was at the storehouse, counting up barrels of smoked venison and salted fish with Phlegma at his side talking about the winter vegetables that they would be able to manage this year to supplement their stores. Her family had been on Berk as long as had Hiccup’s, right since the first settling, and though she had lost her husband she had raised her three daughters to be hardy, strong folk.

“Hiccup,” said Stoick, albeit with a note of confusion in his voice. “What are you doing here?”

Hiccup saw the way that Stoick’s eyes flicked behind him, looking for Toothless most likely. It felt strange not having his shadow at his back. “We saw something out on the water. A boat.”

Turning, Stoick gestured for Phlegma to take over the counting, and handed over the slate he had been holding. He brushed off his hands as he strode over to Hiccup and Astrid, and spoke with a slightly lowered voice. “A boat? Not one of ours?”

“Berk sail,” said Hiccup. Whether or not Astrid was deliberately letting him take the lead, he was grateful to her. “But it was too far out to be fishing. The figurehead didn’t match any of the boats that... Lugstick and the others took with them.”

Stoick frowned. “How far out?”

“Two hours, at a Gronckle’s pace,” said Hiccup. He mentally weighed it against the boats over which they had flown. “But they’re close to the wind. They might make it here by sunset if they’re lucky. I saw a man on board, and a child. We didn’t get close enough for any more detail.”

“And you didn’t fly close enough to be seen?”

His hand tightened around the head of his cane. It might be the best thing for now, but it wasn’t what Hiccup wanted. “No. We stayed distant.”

Stoick nodded. “Astrid, go down to the towers on the north beach, give them a bearing to keep a watch on. Hiccup, stay here, please.”

“Yes, chief,” said Astrid. With one last look in Hiccup’s direction, she turned away again, and started through the town towards the path down to the beaches and the wharves.

Hiccup forced himself not to watch her for too long before turning back to his father. “What did I do now?” he asked warily.

Stoick took a deep breath, and Hiccup winced in anticipation, but Stoick did not look angry. Hiccup just wasn’t sure what to make of his expression. “The right thing,” said Stoick finally. Hiccup blinked in surprise. “I’m grateful that you told us what you saw – and that you stayed out of sight. I don’t want to see you shot down again.”

“Unless someone else develops the bola-thrower, I’m not sure how likely that is,” Hiccup said, but he just hoped that his tone covered up the way that his hands started trembling slightly. He could remember being trapped in them, feeling Toothless scream until his ears turned numb and his heart seemed to ache with the sound of it. He could remember that terrible plunge to the ground, and knew only too well that Toothless must have lived that twice. “Gobber swears ours is gone for good this time.”

“I still don’t want the risk,” said Stoick firmly, reaching out to rest his hand on Hiccup’s shoulder. It didn’t feel as heavy as usual. “For you or the others. There are other islands that have suffered dragon attacks, just more rarely than Berk.”

“I know. We’ll stay out of sight.”

“Good.” Stoick looked relieved. “And I don’t want you thinking that you’re patrols, either. We have our boats out, we have people on the towers.”

And spyglasses, but Hiccup thought it better not to mention those. “I think the figurehead was a Scauldron. White, or maybe that was just the salt.”

“Thank you,” said Stoick. He patted Hiccup’s shoulder, and that actually _was_ heavy. Hiccup managed not to stumble underneath it. “We’ll take care of this.”

“Dad,” said Hiccup quickly, before he could lose the nerve. “If you could just let the dragons out–”

Stoick sighed, with the smallest shake of his head. “It has been one day, Hiccup. You missed Mildew going round this morning calling for people to bring forward their grievances. And _whether there were any or not_ ,” he added quickly, “if we aren’t careful people will begin to create them. I know that you might not think I’m the most careful of men, Hiccup.”

This from the man who had been known to take a Terrible Terror in each hand and slam them together.

“But there are times when a chief needs to take care. And I fear this is one of them. Go on, now, go back to your friends and see to those dragons.”

Not trusting himself to speak of the dragons, Hiccup just nodded, stepping away. “I think I’ll check on Elsa first,” he said. But Stoick just nodded, before turning to join Phlegma back at the storehouse door.

He couldn’t resent it. Oh, theoretically he could, but resenting was no help to anyone and if Hiccup were honest, he would have far worse things in life to resent than his father not questioning what he said that he was going to do. But it still stung a little that Stoick really thought the matter of the dragons could be so easily put aside.

He really did want to check on Elsa, though. The path down from the storehouse gave him a good look over the village, and he could see Gobber in the smithy working at something or other, but no sign of Elsa. The next palest hair in the village was probably Astrid’s, which he had to admit made Elsa relatively easy to spot from the air, never mind the top of a small hill. That probably meant that she was back at the house.

A few people gave him curious glances as he made his way back down through the village, and Hiccup wondered whether people had really become used to seeing a dragon at his side so quickly. Perhaps that was a good thing, though. He shook his head at the thought as he pushed open the front door to the house.

“Elsa?” The fire smouldered away, keeping the room warm, but there was no sign of her. Hiccup stuck his head into the pantry, then her room. There were still signs that it had been his workshop, from the pins in the walls to the scorch-marks on the ceiling. They had found another clothes-chest for Elsa, and scavenged more clothes to put in it, but even her bed was still little more than planks put together on the floor. All the same, he stepped hastily back as if he was intruding. Frowning, Hiccup raised his voice. “Elsa, are you in?”

“Hiccup?” her voice was distant.

For a moment Hiccup just looked around himself in vague confusion, then caught on to the one other place that she could be. He reached the front door from the inside just as Elsa did from outside, almost bumping into each other on the doorstep.

“There you are,” said Hiccup, not quite hiding his relief. Soil still clung to her hands and dusted the knees of her skirt. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Is everything all right? Toothless?”

“He’s fine. We just...” he waved in the vague direction of the coast. “I needed to tell my father about something. Have you been in the kitchen garden?”

Elsa looked down at her hands, something like guilt flashing across her features, and folded them together as she looked up to Hiccup again. “I spoke with Gobber,” she said quietly. “He said that you did not use the garden...”

“No! No, I mean, we don’t, which is why I asked. I mean, there’s no way you could get less out of it than we currently do,” said Hiccup. Even those families who had farmland often kept a small kitchen garden, for herbs during the summer or for a smaller winter plot. The last thing that Hiccup had successfully taken from their garden, though, was a bad rash from having fallen into a clump of nettles. “If you have any skill with plants, it’s probably more than the rest of us put together.”

Stoick wasn’t exactly the green-fingered sort, and Gobber was rather short of fingers of any colour. When Hiccup had been younger, he had tried to copy some of the other children his age and help to keep some plants, but it had been remarkably unsuccessful. Not the least because his actual ability to tell poisonous plants from edible ones had not been too good at that age.

Tentatively, Elsa smiled. “I have not seen keeping plants for many years now.”

“I didn’t know that Wildlings did,” admitted Hiccup. He leant one shoulder against the doorframe, raising his left leg to rub at the stump. The cold seemed to be making it sore, or perhaps he just needed to play around with the wool more until it was comfortable. “We presumed... well, we guessed, mostly.”

Sometimes the guessing had been jovial, or at least fairly good-natured, but at other times there would be a dark edge. Cannibalism, dark magic, all sorts of things which seemed ridiculous now that he had seen Elsa – indeed, seen any Wildling – in the flesh.

“But they... they keep plants? In the… village you talked about?”

Elsa pressed her lips together for a moment, as if uncertain whether she should answer, and Hiccup was just on the verge of apologising for bringing it up when she spoke. “They will stay in a place for some years, but not long. They keep plants, some animals. But they move a lot.”

In case dealing with dragons was not enough, there would be the occasional summer when the Berkians would get it into their head to send hunting parties down into the Wildlands. Sometimes they bought back stories of wildlings that they had found and killed. Sometimes they bought back body parts to prove it. Stoick had accepted it all with a sort of grim pragmatism; it had seemed so necessary at the time.

He tried not to linger on those thoughts for too long. There would be a peace to be made, if he had his way, and wrongs would need to be righted at that time. “Have we got anything edible out here?” he asked instead, stepping out and letting the door swing closed behind him.

Elsa went to tuck back a curl of hair, and caught herself before she smeared dirt on her cheek. With a mutter that was meant to be a request for permission, Hiccup reached out to tuck it back for her instead. She gave him a grateful smile. “Yes. There is... I do not know some of the words yet.”

“We can work on that,” he said. As long as he actually recognised the plants himself, of course. He trusted Elsa to recognise which plants were edible better than he trusted himself, at least. Between the two of them they might actually manage something.

The wind whipped around the edge of the building; Hiccup grimaced as it seemed to cut through his clothes, but Elsa did not even seem to notice. “I have been clearing the ones you cannot eat.”

Which, unfortunately, would not include the nettles. Hiccup supposed that one benefit of his metal leg would be that it would not be so easy to sting. A low wall encircled what had originally been a garden, but had turned wilder than the land around it. Valka had kept it once, Stoick had said, which might also have helped to explain why it had been left wild. Hopefully he would be all right with Elsa working on it, as well.

“What have we got left, then?” said Hiccup, stepping in. A pile of weeds was just inside the gateway, dark earth wounds marking where they had been torn up. Elsa knelt down on an exposed stepping stone which Hiccup had not even known was there, and he tried to hunker down beside her. Tried being the operative word, because his balance was off and he tumbled sideways, bumping into Elsa and ending up on his backside on the paving stone beside her.

She looked at him in surprise, then giggled. Probably justified considering the inelegance of the move, and Hiccup did not even attempt to make it look deliberate. He adjusted his feet instead and brushed some of the dirt off his hands.

“Chickweed?” he said, nodding to the white flowers at the foot of the wall.

“ _Maatehonan_ ,” said Elsa softly, with a nod. She indicated a second plant, then a third. “ _Okaanan, am hursuliipan_.”

“Nettles,” supplied Hiccup, pointing at the offending plant, “and... is that a wild onion? Those look a lot like daffodils, you’ve got to be careful of them.”

Onions were one of the plants which coped better with the extremes of Berkian weather, even before they had been crossed with the wild sort to make them hardier still. Phlegma had been glad to have a willing audience for her explanation about the difference between Berkian and more southerly species. If he’d had the talent to apply his knowledge, she probably would have been even happier.

He expected Elsa to wave off his confusion, as most Berkians tended to do when met with anyone that did not agree with them. Instead, she scooped one of the plants right out of the ground, ice forming on her hands as she slipped them beneath the surface. She rubbed the soil off the bulb and dug in her nail to split the outermost layer of skin.

“Oh, yeah,” said Hiccup, as he caught the sharp smell of onion on the air. He did not expect Elsa to take a bite straight out of the wild onion, flesh crunching between her teeth. “I am so glad that you know what you’re doing,” he added, as Elsa looked at him innocently. She offered him the rest of the bulb. “No, I’m good, thanks.”


	7. Chapter 7

He was still sitting there, trying to name the edible plants which Elsa had left in the ground, when Astrid leant on the wall and cocked her head at the pair of them.

“Dragons or gardening? Wouldn’t have figured you’d think that was much of a choice,” she said.

“Well, I’ve pretty much frozen to the ground by now,” said Hiccup, “so I figured I might as well stay here for a while.”

It wasn’t quite a lie, considering how cold the stone was and the fact that the back of his legs were starting to go numb, but he tried to get to his feet anyway. He didn’t manage it until he got his metal foot braced against the next stepping stone along, and then managed to stagger upright and grab hold of the wall. He risked shaking his good foot in the air.

“Gone to sleep,” he said, as Astrid raised an eyebrow and looked him up and done. He tried to brush some of the dirt off his side. “Apparently Elsa can keep plants without killing them, so it’s been decided that she would be the best person to deal with this.”

“Uh-huh,” said Astrid. She looked down to Elsa, who was still kneeling patiently, now with her hands folded in her lap, as if waiting for some order or permission. “Well, if you need any cuttings, just ask. Though Fishlegs’s mother might have more plants.”

“Thank you.”

“Or Phlegma,” Hiccup pointed out. Giving up on the dirt, considering that he was mostly smearing it around by now, he straightened up. “Did you speak to them at the watchtowers?”

Astrid nodded. “They’ll keep an eye out. There are clouds coming in though, might be a storm on its way.”

“First storm of the season,” said Hiccup. “Just what we need.”

To be fair, for a Berkian winter this wasn’t particularly early, but the first real storm of the winter was never a pretty sight. If they were lucky, it came after the winter slaughter, and would help to freeze the food for them. If they were unlucky, it killed off the weaker animals before they could. Whoever was on the boat, he hoped that they got in ahead of the storm, and were not wrecked before they even managed to make it to shore.

“Come on, then, we should be heading back. Goodness knows what the others are up to. You sure that you don’t want to join us, Elsa?”

She shook her head, but smiled. “No, thank you.”

“All right,” he said. He wasn’t sure whether he should pat her on the shoulder or something, just a casual touch to remind her that she was a part of his household, of his family. Even after their talk beside the fire, though, he was wary. “I’ll see you later, then.”

Elsa turned back to her work as he joined Astrid and the two of them started back in the direction of the academy. Lars Thorston, helping his father push a cart piled high with crates towards the storehouse, gave them an enthusiastic wave hello, and Hiccup gave a vague wave back even if Astrid did not respond.

“You know,” admitted Hiccup, as they reached the edge of the village, “it has occurred to me that it might not have been the best idea to leave the others unattended.”

“I’m sure Fishlegs will be able to keep them in line,” said Astrid.

There was a pregnant pause as they both tried to picture Fishlegs attempting to control Snotlout and the twins. Hiccup could not help looking over in the direction of the academy, almost fearful that there would be smoke rising into the air already. All seemed quiet, however.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” he said aloud, but he did start walking a little faster.

“Yeah,” said Astrid, not sounding at all like she actually believed him. “Of course it will be.”

 

 

 

 

 

They found Fishlegs in the middle of the arena, scratching Meatlug’s belly as she lay on her side with one foot twitching in the air. Silversnap and Skyfire, now truly flying rather than jumping and fluttering along for a short distance, were chasing each other through the air with little puffs of flame.

“Where are the others?” said Hiccup slowly. He looked around the arena, but there was no sign of broken boxes, and no sound of weaponry. The one thing he did find to concern him was the bucket in the middle of the arena with steam still rising from it.

“Oh, they went to get more rocks,” said Fishlegs casually. He found a spot under Meatlug’s foreleg that made her tongue loll out of her mouth and her back foot kick harder. “Who’s a good girl? Are you a good girl? I think it’s you. I think it’s you.”

“Your position as mother just got usurped,” said Astrid, folding her arms across her chest.

Hiccup shot her a look as he made his way over to the bucket, and nearly slipped in a puddle of water for his trouble. “What do you mean, _more_ rocks? And...” There was a lump of rock at the bottom of the bucket. Testing the temperature of the water with his knuckles first, Hiccup scooped it out. It looked a little bit like marble. “What is this?”

At that, Fishlegs stopped, looking a little more guilty. “She was eating some of the rocks outside the academy, but then she started to look uncomfortable. I thought that tickling her would distract her, but instead...”

“She threw up the rocks?” concluded Hiccup. Well, he supposed that if fish could go both ways, then so could rocks. He dropped it back into the bucket again, and continued over towards Hookfang’s pen. The clouds were a little darker than before, but he could see the red of Toothless’s tail against the back wall. “Hey, bud. You gonna come out again?”

One green eye opened in the darkness, then Toothless snorted and closed it again.

Hiccup sighed. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m trying to get this sorted, I really am.” He reached out to rest his hand Toothless’s forehead, and though the dragon huffed he did not pull away. Finally, his tail flicked away from his face and he got to his feet. “There we go,” said Hiccup, scratching gently beneath Toothless’s chin. “That’s better.”

“So,” said Astrid, “Meatlug ate the rocks, then threw them up. And the twins and Snotlout feel inclined to test this?”

“Well, actually it was sort of my idea,” Fishlegs admitted. Both of them looked at him incredulously, and he squirmed and shuffled closer to the Gronckle. “The rock that came out wasn’t the same as the one that went in! We’re on limestone around here, but what she... produced was definitely marble. And I mean, I’m no stonemason,” he snorted, “but I think I know a decent quality of marble when I see it.”

“I know that they used to quarry marble in Arendelle, but that was a long time ago,” said Astrid. She went for the bucket as well and pulled out the lump of rock, turning it over in her hands. “It’s still warm.”

It had been most of a century since Arendelle had sent people out to quarry the marble in the mountains to their north, before the wildlings had started to really grow in number. Even now, though, some of the public buildings in Arendelle were fronted in marble, some of the statues carved from it. Hiccup suspected that the only reason the palace was not fully marble was that it was just too large, the walls too extensive, but he knew that there was at least one marble floor to be seen inside.

“So the others...” Hiccup prompted

“Are collecting various rocks to see whether Meatlug can change any of them,” Fishlegs finally said, and the last piece slotted into place.

In theory, it was a good idea. It _would_ be interesting to know what Meatlug could do, and it _would_ be best to do it all in one go rather than picking it up as they went along or guessing what rocks she had eaten. After all, she had produced Gronckle iron; there was not really any way of knowing what else she might manage. In practice, Hiccup was concerned that it was not going to go quite so smoothly.

He exchanged a glance with Toothless, who looked at him steadfastly, then with Astrid, who shrugged.

“All right,” said Hiccup. “Did you bring some paper?”

“You bet I did,” said Fishlegs. He reached to the small of his back and produced a small, leather-bound notebook, and Hiccup just was not going to ask where it had come from. He did have a bad feeling that they were going to be struggling for paper by the time that spring rolled around and Johan made his first visit of the new year. More spyglasses probably wasn’t going to be enough to trade with this time.

All that was left to do was wait for Snotlout and the twins to return with their spoils. Hiccup appropriated a nearby barrel for a seat and sank onto it with a sigh. He had been using the metal leg just long enough to stop being unwaveringly grateful for it, he supposed; it needed cleaning to prevent rust, and from what Gobber was saying he would be using the cane for probably several moons more. He still preferred it to the crutches, but it was taking some getting used to.

One of Astrid’s aunts was a stonemason, he vaguely recalled, though she had left Berk to live with her husband on some other island. Astrid and Fishlegs were discussing the marble with surprising intensity. Toothless watched them for a moment, sniffing at the air, then padded over to rub his cheek against Hiccup’s left thigh.

“Knew you couldn’t stay mad at me,” said Hiccup, but his throat tightened slightly. Abruptly he decided that if the ship they had seen coming in made it to the wharves before nightfall, he was taking Toothless down with him. Maybe even if it was after nightfall.

Toothless’s head in his lap, Hiccup sat back, content to watch the discussion of the marble and the two hatchlings chasing each other around the arena. Though they would easily be small enough to fly out, he could not help but notice that they did not. They wanted to stay with Meatlug as well, he supposed. A sigh left his lips at the thought.

It wasn’t long before whooping announced the return of the twins. Barf and Belch landed on the roof of the academy, grinning down at them through the bars, and Hiccup only had to take one look at the bulging sacks the twins were holding to know what was going to happen next.

“Don’t you dare!” he shouted, realising even as he did so that daring the twins was never a wise move. “Bring those down here, or you could hit the hatchlings!”

That did it. Though the twins considered each other to be their preferred targets, anyone of their age or older was fair play, and the adult dragons could handle themselves. Hatchlings, though, were a different matter, and with a groan and a huff they directed Barf and Belch round to the gate again and dismounted to get through the low doorway.

Tuffnut already had a black eye, Ruffnut a bruise on her cheek. Though he suspected he knew the answer, Hiccup had to ask. “Are you guys all right?”

“This muttonhead,” said Ruffnut, jerking a thumb at her brother, “thought we could get some rocks from the bird cliff over above Rotten Egg Point.”

“And it isn’t even nesting season,” said Hiccup, resisting the urge to sigh. There was more than enough of the island without running into humans, dragons or nesting sea-birds, but leave it to the twins to find a way around that. “Where’s Snotlout?”

He didn’t need to wait for an answer as a billow of flame filled the doorway, accompanied by a Monstrous Nightmare’s roar. It was followed by Snotlout, running probably the fastest that Hiccup had ever seen, crossing the arena and throwing himself into the water trough. Steam went up.

“Never mind,” said Astrid.

Snotlout hauled himself out of the trough again, dripping wet and scowling. “Again?” he shouted at Hookfang. “Is this really necessary? Or is it just fun for you?”

With a snort, Hookfang lowered the blanket that he had been gripping in his teeth. It was smouldering at the edges, but not quite alight. The dragon shook himself until his flames went out, then scuttled into the arena and set about trying to lick Snotlout.

“Cut that out,” said Snotlout, but he sounded more embarrassed than truly angry. He gave Hookfang’s snout a half-hearted push away. “Hookfang!”

“And with that,” Hiccup said, trying to get attention back to one place even as Astrid filled a bucket of water and went to put out the blanket. “Let’s try to get back to things, shall we?” He slid down from the barrel and tried to act like he knew what he was doing. “Now, it looks like Meatlug is going to be kind enough to let us test out what she can do with regards to producing rocks. It would be best if we did this in a controlled manner, with–”

“Blah, blah, blah,” said Snotlout, making a flapping motion with one hand. “We know what we’re doing, let’s get on with it.”

Hiccup looked at him pointedly, but it wasn’t as if that had ever worked anyway. Water dripped from Snotlout’s clothes, but he wasn’t shivering; you got used to the cold in Berk, and having the dragons around managed to make even the arena feel a little bit warmer. “Fine,” Hiccup said finally. “Fishlegs, Astrid, over to you.”

“All right,” said Astrid. She selected some of the rocks that Hookfang had bought over, reddish and banded. “Starting with some sandstone from...” she looked at Snotlout.

It seemed to take him a moment to realise that something was expected of him. “Huh?” Seeing Astrid’s expression, he hastily stopped wringing the water out of his vest. “Oh, down by Long Beach somewhere.”

“Don’t write ‘somewhere’,” she said to Fishlegs, seeing his charcoal at the ready. “We’ll go looking for it later.”

Solemnly, they placed the rocks down in front of Meatlug, and even Hiccup found himself growing more curious as she crunched them down and snuffled against the ground as if looking for more. Fishlegs tucked the book under one arm, knelt down, and started tickling Meatlug under one armpit.

Smoke came from Meatlug’s nostrils, and Hiccup took a careful step back. For a moment nothing happened, and from the way that Ruffnut rolled her eyes he just _knew_ that a comment was about to be made, and then Meatlug heaved once before spewing up a thin lava that spread quickly across the ground.

“Whoa!” said Ruffnut, leaning closer. Luckily, Astrid had the presence of mind to grab one of her braids and prevent her from getting overly acquainted with the lava. “Ouch!”

Hiccup grabbed the bucket of water and threw it hastily over the white-hot spread. Clouds of steam went up, and the ground itself seemed to spit and hiss, but with some mutterings from the others they waved away the worst of it and looked down expectantly.

“Uh, I don’t see anything,” said Tuffnut finally.

“I think it’s transparent,” said Fishlegs, a faint note of awe in his voice. He dropped to one knee, tentatively touched his fingers to the surface, then dug his nails beneath the edge of the pane and raised it up. “I think it’s _glass_.”

“Glass?” Snotlout made a derisive noise. “Yeah, right. How would you make glass out of _stone_?”

“I heard that far to the south, they make glass from sand,” said Hiccup. True, the first place that he had heard such had been from Johann, but over the years other people had spoken about it as well. Among the Vikings, glass was occasionally smelted down and worked, but with nothing like the skill that they had in some other lands. “Perhaps sandstone isn’t all that different.”

With a hawking sound, Meatlug spat up another small puddle of lava. This one looked rather darker. “Do you think that could be the impurities?” said Fishlegs, as Astrid one again made use of the bucket.

“Could be,” said Hiccup. His mind was starting to work already. Something to do with the different temperatures at which things melted, perhaps. Separating them out into layers like good iron being purified.

“Let’s try another one,” said Ruffnut. Her enthusiasm surprised Hiccup for a moment, until he realised that molten rock was probably exactly the sort of thing that the twins would think was a good idea.

He glanced over to the water trough, and noted that there was still plenty to go around. “As long as the ground can handle it,” he said. “Fishlegs, keep hold of that glass. We might be able to make something useful of it.”

“I’m going to get some more buckets,” said Astrid, rolling her eyes. It wasn’t quite as sharp as it could have been, though.

 

 

 

 

 

By nightfall, they had managed to produce glass, marble, slate, a respectable lump of iron from some iron ore that Snotlout had turned up, and some indistinct gneiss. The twins were trying to work out what else they could feed Meatlug while Fishlegs frantically tried to write down as much as he could about what they had seen. Hiccup had retreated a way and was now perched on his barrel again, turning over the bloom of iron in his hand and thinking about Gronckle iron.

This had to be it. The source, at least. Whether or not Meatlug knew that she was making it, there was no way of knowing, but there had to be a combination of stones that had made it. Around this end of the archipelago, the base metal was almost certainly iron. He should have taken a closer look while he had the chance.

He was only startled out of his reverie as Astrid appeared in front of him and waved something small and red beneath his nose. “What does this look like to you?” she said.

At first, Hiccup had to lean back so that he could actually focus on it. He held out his hand for Astrid to drop the small stone into; it was cold, jagged-edged, and not much larger than a pea. “What was this from?”

“You know how Meatlug does the main...” Astrid made a vaguely projectile gesture from her mouth.

“Expulsion?” suggested Hiccup.

“Still not great, but all right. So, she does the main expulsion, and then that one afterwards?”

“The impurities.” Sandstone was not made of pure sand, after all, anyone knew that. It was one of the reasons that Hiccup had been so keen to see Meatlug eat the iron ore, after he realised that Snotlout had bought some; it was too much work for an island as small as Berk to process its own haematite into iron, and Gobber was always trading ore for the finished product.

“Well, I don’t know much about impurities,” said Astrid, “but that looks like a jewel to me.”

Frowning, Hiccup held the stone up to what light remained, and realised that Astrid was right. It had a deep red colour, stronger than even the stained glass he had seen in Arendelle, and a jagged shape that had a sense of squared-off edges about it.

“Is it a ruby?” said Astrid in disbelief.

“I don’t think so,” said Hiccup. He’d seen rubies but, again, they were an Arendellen thing. Vikings preferred amber and pearl and good solid things that you could trust to stay in the handle of a knife or a piece of jewellery. They didn’t like faceted, cut jewels like were all the rage down south. Jewellery was meant to be worn, on Berk, and worn down. Polished. “I _think_ it might be a garnet. See the shape of it? But I’d have to check to be sure.”

“Check where?”

“My father’s got this old book on mining,” he said, passing her back the stone. “I guess that somewhere along the line, one of the chiefs hoped to get some mining done on Berk, even if it didn’t work out. There are notes about some of the rocks within a couple of days, actually. That came from the impurities?”

“Yup,” she replied. The gem glittered in her hand as she held it up to the light in turn. “You’re giving this to me?”

Hiccup shrugged, determinedly turning a blind eye to the fact that the twins were now feeding Meatlug the bucket. He didn’t want the argument, even if the metalwork on it would take a while to replace. Smithing wasn’t supposed to be his problem any more, after all. “You found it. What batch did it come from?”

“I think it was the shale, but we weren’t exactly keeping close track of them,” admitted Astrid. Hiccup nodded along, and considered asking Fishlegs, but Meatlug had been vomiting back up the rocks and impurities in pretty much the same place each time and there probably wasn’t too much point. “Interesting to know, though.”

“Oh, definitely,” said Hiccup. Astrid was still turning the jewel back and forth in her hand, and he wondered whether there was anything in that book which said about working gemstones – whether he could grind them like glass, or whether there was some more intricate process. Then a horn sounded, booming through the early evening.

They all looked up sharply, and Hiccup put a hand on Toothless’s back even as his plates twitched. “Alarm,” said Astrid, getting to her feet. She slipped the garnet into the sheath of her knife.

One long blast, followed by two short. They all held their breath, in case something more was forthcoming.

“Unrecognised boat,” said Hiccup. “Right, then. You guys stay with the dragons, we’re going to see who it is. Fishlegs, can I borrow your spyglass again?”

Fishlegs tucked his notebook away and produced the spyglass, tossing it lightly through the air to land in Hiccup’s outstretched hands. Hiccup was already swinging himself into the saddle, feeling Toothless’s muscles bunch beneath him in anticipation.

“Uh, Hiccup,” said Astrid, “what part of your father’s instructions didn’t you understand?”

He chose to ignore that question, opening Toothless’s tail but keeping the tension in his legs to hold the dragon back. “If I need you,” he said to the group at large, “I’ll fire into the air. They won’t be able to see me against the sky, but any of you would show up.”

“Hiccup!” Astrid started to protest, but he really didn’t have the time to discuss this if the boat was in sight of the wharves in this sort of weather. The shift in his body gave Toothless the permission to fly, and they bounded out of the arena and took to the air without even missing a pace.

The air welcomed them back like an old, if slightly damp, friend. The clouds were low tonight, but as long as Hiccup stayed low in them he could still see the ground below, giving way to the faint white marks of the breakers on the shore as they made it out over the sea. It was not that long of a walk from the academy to the wharves – for Toothless, it was a matter of seconds until the ship came back into view, pale brown dimmed by the darkness.

One of the Berkian ships had pulled up alongside it, and doubtless there were weapons at the ready. Hiccup produced the borrowed spyglass and peered through as Toothless hovered just below the clouds, wings a slower, steady beat that wasn’t too hard to adjust for. His father was not on board, but Spitelout was, and as the ships drew alongside each other he cupped his hands around his mouth to call over to the other ship.

The other man called back, and then Spitelout was laughing and gesturing to the men on the oars. The boats steered closer together, until the man threw a rope across and they were hauled gunwale to gunwale and Spitelout stepped across to embrace the newcomer warmly.

“Looks like a false alarm,” said Hiccup, though whether it was to himself or to Toothless he was not even sure. The boats separated again, and it looked as if Spitelout was planning to help steer the new ship into shore. Probably a good idea, considering that Toothless was starting to struggle more against the winds; Hiccup looked north to see growing clouds and a faint flash of lightning in the distance. “Come on,” he added, before he could think better of it. “Let’s get down there.”

They landed on the wharf where the fishing boats were tied off, now quiet and dark for the night and sheltered from the worst of the waves by the outermost wharf. Toothless rumbled vaguely as Hiccup slid from his back, furled his wings, and tried to nudge in front when Hiccup started towards the knot of people and the torches at the waterfront.

Hiccup hushed him gently, stepping forward to brush a hand against his forehead, and tried to shoulder through the crowd as the boat drew closer to the shore. Of course, that was easier said than done when you were Hiccup, and his first attempt to shoulder through ended with him bouncing off the back of the first person he walked into.

The woman turned, looking at him with surprise. “Sorry, Hiccup. Didn’t see you there.”

“Happens to me a lot, Outragia,” said Hiccup, rubbing his shoulder. Her gaze flicked back, and Toothless chirped again. He probably wasn’t all that visible in the darkness, especially when people had been standing in the torchlight without worrying about their night vision. But she stepped aside, and Hiccup allowed Toothless to be the one to nudge through the crowd. Night Furies were good at clearing a path.

He saw the boat close in, and heard a ‘Hup!’ from Spitelout that was usually accompanied with throwing a rope ashore to cast on. At the last minute, Hiccup stepped ahead of Toothless and slipped to the front of the crowd, just as there was a hail of “Stoick the Vast! It’s been a while!”

“Burplout?” said Stoick incredulously, and Hiccup supposed that it was a good thing that the attention was not on him at that particular moment.

With a laugh, Burplout climbed ashore and drew Stoick into a shoulder-slapping embrace. “The very same! What, did you think you were rid of me for good? And Hiccup!”

Oh dear.

“You’ve grown!” Before he could dodge aside, Hiccup found himself hugged in turn, cane and all. The breath was crushed out of him, but Burplout laughed again, a great hearty sound that rattled Hiccup’s teeth in his head.

As he was finally released, Hiccup gasped and stumbled, and only Stoick’s hand on his shoulder stopped him from making a fool out of himself once again. Burplout was not quite so tall as Stoick, but he was still heavily built, with a huge belly and a bushy black beard with intricate braids all down it. Hiccup had not seen him in four or five years now, not since he and his family had set to sea, but he had not changed all that much and, if anything, looked even more like his older brother Spitelout than before.

“What are you doing here?” said Stoick. “I thought you planned to take up trade!”

“We did,” Burplout replied, “made some good trade, got some nice things from it. But there are some things can’t be done at sea.”

He turned back to the boat to help his wife Pinebolt ashore. Hiccup vaguely remembered her as well, though her hair had been longer and darker and she had worn more armour in those days. Spitelout had Pinebolt’s other arm, and though she gave her husband a look which said that she was perfectly capable of keeping her own balance, she accepted the assistance onto the wharf. Being heavily pregnant probably had something to with that.

“Good to see Berk again,” she said, by wait of greeting to Stoick. “I hope you’ll forgive the unorthodox time of arrival.”

Stoick chuckled and shook his head. “No, it’s always good to have family back on the shores of Berk. Come on, we’ll find you beds for the night and have one of the old houses cleaned up in no time. Where’s Wartlout?”

“Just on board,” said Burplout. “Wart! Out of that barrel!”

“Dad!” complained one of the barrels, rocking from side to side. The lid popped off and Wartlout appeared, frowning. “You spoiled it!”

“Come on,” said Spitelout. He hooked the boy under the arms and lifted him out of the barrel to deposit him on the deck.

Warlout leapt onto the wharf without further ado and stood proudly in the light, eyeing up first Stoick and then Hiccup in turn. “Are you really my cousin?” he said to Hiccup.

“Second cousin,” Hiccup replied. Family was important on Berk, perhaps more so than on any of the other islands of the archipelago. Whether it was on the boats or against the dragons, you always had to know who your closest allies were.

“Huh.” Another scan up and down. Wartlout had only been small when he had gone to sea, and although he would only be about nine now he moved with the rolling gait of a sailor. “What happened to your leg?”

Faintly, Hiccup knew that he should not rise to the bait of a nine-year old who just happened to be able to walk better than he could right now. But he couldn’t help it. “Dragon,” he said, as nonchalantly as he could manage and with a shrug. He felt Toothless nudge against his leg a moment later, and just about had time to realise that this might have been a bad idea before Wartlout’s eyes went wide as _he_ noticed Toothless as well.

“Dragon!” yelled Wartlout. He stumbled back beside his father, who drew his sword and yes, this was a really, really bad idea.

“No, no!” said Hiccup. He waved his hands at Burplout. “Put the sword down!” Toothless had started growling, hunching over slightly, and Hiccup felt the nudge of wings against his back. People in the crowd were starting to talk, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying because Burplout and Stoick had both started talking loudly to each other. “Put it down! It’s fine! Not _this_ dragon! _He won’t hurt anyone_!”

Burplout’s sword lowered, but he did not sheathe it, and at a final bark of “Quiet!” from Stoick everyone else settled down as well.

“Is that... a Night Fury?” said Burplout hoarsely.

“Yes,” said Hiccup. “They’re real. And they’re not what we thought. It’s all right. Toothless,” he added, placing one hand on the dragon’s forehead and looking round for a moment. “Calm down.”

Toothless’s eyes opened fully again, and he looked up at Hiccup questioningly. But his wings furled and his teeth withdrew, and Hiccup turned so that he could back towards Burplout with Toothless carefully following him.

Compared to the other dragons, Toothless had not seemed all that _big_ , but somehow on the wharf he suddenly seemed to take up a lot more space than ever before. His tail slowly swayed back and forth, and his eyes occasionally shifted from Hiccup to Burplout and back again, but as Burplout’s sword turned further towards the ground the tense lines went out of him.

“See?” said Hiccup. He looked round to Burplout and Pinebolt eagerly; they looked confused, but that was better than angry so he would consider it a start. “Come on, someone give me your hand.”

Hiccup swung his cane around and into the sheath on his back, then reached out his newly-free hand to the couple, gesturing with his fingers. They exchanged a glance, Burplout frowning and shaking his head minutely, but then Pinebolt gave him another stern look and put her hand in Hiccup’s instead.

“All right,” she said, and nodded to the Berkians gathered around. “It seems they believe you.”

Hiccup risked a glance at the others himself. Stoick was trying to hold a calm expression, but Hiccup could see the concern in the set of his brows, the way that his lips were pressed tightly together. Mercifully, most of the others were those who were willing to put some trust in the dragons, and not Mildew or his ilk. With a deep breath, Hiccup stepped further towards Pinebolt and guided her arm across him, until he could withdraw his hand and leave Toothless standing there, looking up at them both.

He was impressed that Pinebolt’s hand was not even shaking, although he could feel her breathing a little faster beside him as Toothless looked her over and then sniffed her hand. Then, with a low murmuring sound, he closed his eyes and brushed his nose against her palm.

Pinebolt gasped. For a moment Hiccup looked round in fear that she would try to flee, but she looked astonished as Toothless rubbed against her, then started to sniff her wrist and up along her arm.

“What has happened since we’ve been gone?” said Burplout, looking almost accusingly at Stoick. His hand shifted slightly on the hilt of his sword, and Toothless’s noise became a little more warning for a moment before he returned to snuffling against the cuff of Pinebolt’s sleeve.

“A lot,” replied Stoick, in a tone that broached no arguments, “and most of it in the last few moons. But my son is telling you the truth. The dragon will not hurt you.”

One hand still on Pinebolt’s arm while Toothless continued to sniff his way up it, Hiccup looked to his father with a small, grateful smile. It was only mostly because Stoick was standing up for Toothless. It started to rain around them, stinging small drops that seemed like they could cut through anything that was being worn, and Hiccup retrieved his cane before it could be unhelpful and fall into the water. The steps back up to Berk were bad enough when they were dry.

With a huff, Toothless nudged his face past Pinebolt’s arm and went to sniff at her belly instead. She gave a nervous laugh and backed away slightly, bumping into her husband, but Toothless simply made another of his rumbling, chuffing sounds and touched his nose very gently to her stomach.             

“Toothless,” said Hiccup, feeling his cheeks grow hot. “Cut that out.”

He put one hand on Toothless’s forehead to guide him away, but it was difficult to move any dragon that wished to stay still and Toothless was no exception. He ignored Hiccup’s push and made one of his chirping sounds, nudging Pinebolt’s belly slightly. She pressed closer to her husband in lieu of moving further away.

Weighing painfully on Hiccup’s mind was the fact that they had an entire audience for this. Stoick was frowning, although that didn’t necessarily mean much, and though most of the others were looking curious there was a wary edge to the air. Finally, Hiccup slipped his hand down, pushed it between Toothless’s nose and Pinebolt’s stomach, and gave a firm enough push that Toothless apparently decided to pay attention.

It was probably better not to admit, at least just yet, that Hiccup had never seen Toothless do that before. Even now, Toothless was looking at Pinebolt with his head cocked, plates twitching slightly and nostrils twitching. Hiccup tried to rein in some dignity. “Things really have changed,” he said, looking from Pinebolt to Burplout to Wartlout still hiding behind his father and not even caring that people could see him doing so. “It’s... peace.”

“Peace with dragons,” said Pinebolt, just slightly dubiously. She rested one hand on her stomach, still looking at Toothless more than Hiccup. “After everything?”

“We figured it was better than war with dragons,” said Hiccup, before his father or anyone else could reply. A glance over at Stoick told him that it was the right thing to have said.

Stoick stepped in and patted Hiccup on the shoulder, even if he had to reach over Toothless’s back to do it. “Well, you’ve met the newest resident of Berk, then. Come on, the rain’s getting worse. Spitelout, grab a couple of the lads and see to unloading the boat. You got any spare room?”

“With the lizard gone, yes,” Spitelout replied, still standing on the boat with his hands on his hips. “Snotlout can sleep in the main room tonight.”

“Good,” said Stoick, nodding. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to see his cousin. Hiccup, why don’t you go get them, and shut up the dragons for the night?”

After everything, he still wanted to put Toothless back in the cage. Hiccup’s hand tightened on the head of his cane until he thought that his knuckles would crack. “Dad,” he started, voice tight.

Stoick must have heard it. “I’ll meet you at home, and we can talk,” he said, with what was probably meant to be a subtly significant glance but was almost certainly visible to everybody gathered there. “You go and get Snotlout and the others.”

“Come on, bud,” he said to Toothless, rather than reply to his father and risk loosing some of the things which he actually wanted to say. Burplout and Pinebolt both backed away as Hiccup slid back into the saddle and sheathed his cane in the manner to which he was becoming accustomed. Toothless rumbled, but turned around as Hiccup leant, and with a bound they were airborne once again.

The feel of the wind almost made up for the way that he had been sent back to the academy by his father. _Almost_. He tried not to linger on it too long, but it wasn’t all that easy with rain dripping down the back of his neck and the wind getting up the back of his shirt. Because Berk’s weather just had to join in on the fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The names Burplout and Wartlout come from the online _School of Dragons_ ; their exact relationship to Snotlout is made up, and Pinebolt is a complete OC. A quieter chapter, I know, but it's setting up for the next few.


	8. Chapter 8

The rain only made the walk back from the academy seem longer, not to mention harder to handle with one metal foot. Three times, Hiccup slid sideways into Astrid, and she propped him back up again with barely a glance round. That had almost stopped being embarrassing after happening this many times. Sullen silence hung in the air between the rest of them, an angry edge to it.

“I can’t believe we have to leave our dragons behind _again_ ,” said Ruffnut finally, as the rain grew heavier and various of them adopted the cross-armed, hunch-shouldered posture meant to keep off as much of it as possible. “Barf and Belch haven’t even done anything!”

“Neither has Stormfly,” Astrid snapped.

“Yeah,” said Snotlout, apparently seeing an opportunity just to agree with Astrid. “It’s totally normal for dragons to eat sheep, right?”

She shot him a glare, but didn’t say anything. For once, Hiccup supposed, Snotlout was right. Even if Stormfly hadn’t killed the sheep, she had certainly been eating it, but that was probably just from thinking that someone had bought her a meal. They turned the last corner of the path and came to the edge of the village, and Fishlegs prepared to break off from the main group.

“Where are you going?” said Tuffnut. “Aren’t you coming to the yak roast at the Great Hall tonight?”

Slaughter Day proper would not be until the new moon, but one of the Thorstons’ yaks had broken an ankle and they were not going to let the opportunity go to waste. With Burplout and Pinebolt having returned, it would probably turn into more of a celebration.

Fishlegs pulled out the notebook and gestured with it, with a sheepish smile. “Just want to get this inside. I’ll see you guys up there.”

“Is Elsa coming this evening?” said Astrid, taking Hiccup by surprise by how quietly she spoke. He realised that none of the others were paying attention, and allowed his own response to be just as quiet.

“She should be, yes. And I figure it would be good to introduce her. I mean... the Jorgensens are family as well.”

Spitelout was mostly good-natured about being behind Hiccup when it came to the line of chiefdom, but Snotlout had used it more as a reason to pick fights when they were children. There had been times when Hiccup had wondered how many of the village agreed.

Astrid’s look spoke volumes. “I know,” said Hiccup. “But still. And Pinebolt’s probably due by Snoggletog.”

“Hope the winter’s not too cold,” said Astrid.

There was nothing that he could do but nod agreement to that. Things might have been better since the battle with the Red Death, but over the summer the dragons had taken more food than ever, and they were going to be eating a lot of salmon this year. And cold winters were always hard on children.

“You heading straight up?” he said, nodding towards the Great Hall at the top of the hill. Even Astrid had her arms around herself against the weather, and her hair was getting plastered to her forehead. The wind gusted around them, and when the thought of Toothless flashed through Hiccup’s mind he had to grit his teeth. Surely dragons could handle some wind.

“I was going to,” she replied. “You’re heading elsewhere?”

“Need to find Elsa.”

“Hey! Lovebirds!” shouted Ruffnut, and Hiccup spun round so fast he almost did a full spin before catching himself. While he and Astrid were talking, they had managed to get ahead of the others. “I said, are you gonna come see the hide or not?”

Sharing out the meat from the yak was considered a fair trade for fodder over the winter and any other trades that the Thorstons might need to make, but the hide was theirs. The twins were better at telling yaks apart than any of the others, though, and to Hiccup a yak was a yak. “I’m good, thanks,” he said, refusing to acknowledge the hailing. “Though I’m sure it’s a... wonderful yak. Really yak-like.”

“Suit yourself,” said Tuffnut, with a shrug, and turned off towards his house. Ruffnut followed, and Snotlout paused just a moment longer, looking between Astrid and the twins, before walking away.

“Yak-like?” Astrid deadpanned.

“I was trying.”

She snorted, and they turned towards Hiccup’s house at the foot of the slope. Even with the rain pounding down, there were lights in windows, and he could hear people calling to each other through the darkness. The doors to the Great Hall had been flung open, and firelight spilled out. If the weather had been better, the smell of roasting yak would probably have filled the village as well.

The windows of his home were open slightly as well, firelight just visible, and Hiccup smiled. Gobber had been at the smithy again today, and might have dropped by for a quick scrub-up before heading to the Great Hall, he would not have tarried for long if there was yak to be claimed. Everyone wanted to be friends with the blacksmith.

“Elsa?” he opened the door and ducked just inside, leaving enough room for Astrid so that they could both drip in the doorway rather than traipsing it all through the house. “How are you doing?”

Elsa had kept the fire built up, although the house was still not so warm as the rest of them would usually want it, and it cast a fair light throughout the room. She was sitting cross-legged beside the fire, working with another of the cast-off skirts which she had managed to accumulate over time. Most of them were too large, too long, but she had simply shrugged and said that she could make them smaller. All that Hiccup needed to do now was explain that not every scrap of cloth needed to be hoarded.

As they entered, she looked up and smiled. “Hiccup. The ground is more clear now. You are well?”

“Damp,” he said, with a self-exemplary shrug. “There’s going to be yak at the Great Hall tonight. And... my cousins are back.”

“Cousins?”

“Family,” he said, fairly sure that they had come across that word at some point or another. He waved vaguely with one hand. “Distant family, but family. They met Toothless.”

Elsa slid the sewing from her lap and stood up in one controlled movement. “And it is all right?”

“He liked them,” said Hiccup. It probably wasn’t worth mentioning how much of a shine he had seemed to take to Pinebolt. “They’re... deciding, I think.”

“That is good,” said Elsa, sounding as if she was not even trying to hide the relief in her voice. She tucked her hair back. “There... will be many people at the Great Hall?”

“Probably,” he admitted. One yak produced a lot of meat, even if you were sharing it between a lot of people, and most likely half the village would have checked their pantries and bought up anything that could do with eating up before the slaughter. Of course, Slaughter Day itself would end in a bigger feast, but perhaps this evening would be a good opportunity to smooth things over after the eel incident. “But they’ll be concentrating on the food. And my cousins.”

Elsa hesitated for a moment, and he let her have the time. Finally, she took a deep breath and nodded, stepping out from the bench to join them in the doorway. “Yes. I will come.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Astrid, a touch of warmth in her voice. Hiccup smiled. “Let’s get going before we flood the place.”

One of the advantages of the cane, Hiccup had to admit, was the greater reach. He flicked the windows closed without moving a step, and reluctantly stepped back outside into the rain to wait for the others to join him. No doubt the Jorgensens would colonise a table in the Great Hall and expect Stoick and Hiccup to join them there for the regaling of the last few years’ stories. He probably shouldn’t be feeling like he would rather sit with the Hoffersons instead.

 

 

 

 

 

It was exactly as he had predicted. Already a few dozen people were in the Great Hall, sitting at tables or standing around talking. Some barrels of ale had already been tapped, cauldrons of soup were around the fire, and Tuffnut Sr. was defending the yak with a large knife and determined bellowing. Apparently it was not ready yet.

Burplout and Pinebolt had the central seats at the table closest to the yak, the preferred one for the evening. Spitelout was sitting next to his brother, roaring with laughter, and Stoick was opposite with his expression rather harder to read behind his beard. With a touch to Hiccup’s arm, Astrid slipped away to join her parents, and he and Elsa were left to weave their way across the Hall.

It felt jovial. Not quite Snoggletog-bright, and certainly not as boisterous as it would have been the day that Astrid had succeeded in the arena, but there was already that sense of celebration in the air.  People were chattering and laughing, the fires were high, and roast yak always did smell good after being out in the rain. Seeing another flicker of fear on Elsa’s face, the tension in her shoulders building as if she was readying to run, Hiccup extended his hand to her and smiled when, cautiously, she slipped her hand into his. Her skin was still very cold, even with the trollwort, but he was coming to expect that nowadays.

“Let’s join my father,” he said. “You can meet the others.”

There would be other new faces in the village, of course. Babies that had been born, people that had married in, those brave few souls who had willingly moved out to Berk of all places. Those who had left or died, as well. Spitelout would doubtless derive great amusement from watching his brother struggle, though it would be in as much good humour as it ever was.

He acknowledged waves or calls from a few people as he made his way across the hall, and shook his head to the offers of seats. It still made him want to duck his head and shy away from the newness of it all, people suddenly wanting to accept him as a member of Berk at all. The squeeze that he gave Elsa’s hand might not have been entirely for her benefit.

“Evening, all,” he said, as he finally stepped around his father’s back to the space on the far side. He looked over to Burplout and Pinebolt. “How are you finding us?”

“Been at sea so long I think you lot are swaying back and forth,” said Burplout, waving for them to sit down. Pinebolt smiled in greeting, but her eyes slid down to where Hiccup was still holding Elsa’s hand. All too aware of how that could be misconstrued, Hiccup tried to gracefully let go as he took his seat, pausing as he remembered that he had to swing his left leg over the bench first.

Wartlout was sitting between his father and uncle, Hiccup could now see, already most of the way through a loaf of bread and small pot of dripping. “Did a dragon really take your leg?” he said, before Hiccup was even fully seated. “Was it the Night Fury?”

“Wartlout!” said his mother, but his father snorted.

“Maybe leave that for later,” Burplout suggested.

It was not the worst question that could have been asked, though. “It was a dragon,” said Hiccup, leaning slightly to the side to give Elsa more room to sit down as well. “But not Toothless.”

“That thing was not toothless,” said Burplout flatly.

“He can retract his teeth,” Hiccup replied, putting just the slightest of emphasis on the pronoun. “Toothless is his name. Actually, he saved me from the dragon. The rest of me, anyway,” he corrected, with a vague wave to himself. Wartlout was watching with a sort of fascination, still slowly chewing but with his eyes wide. “The dragon was a Red Death.”

Wartlout looked over at Stoick, with a slight frown. “It’s true,” said Stoick. “Hiccup found Dragon Island, and there was a Red Death there. Since it’s been dead, we’ve had no attacks.”

Well, saying that Hiccup had been the one to kill it would probably be too much of a stretch of credulity for the first day, he supposed. He spotted Snotlout trying to wend his way towards the table with a platter of mugs, only for one to be plucked off by someone or other. With a shout of annoyance, Snotlout tried to push his way after the thief, but Hiccup doubted that was going to go anywhere.

“Are you going to introduce us?” said Pinebolt, with a meaningful nod to Elsa. Whether or not she was trying to turn the conversation away from amputation and dragon killing was another matter altogether.

Hiccup saw Elsa’s hands clench again under the table, and almost wanted to point out that this was nowhere near as dramatic an introduction as helping to destroy the jail and then demonstrating her powers on Dragon Island. But that probably wouldn’t help much either. He settled for brushing his hand against hers again. “This is–”

“Elsa of Maruloet,” said Stoick, before Hiccup could get any further. Hiccup looked round in surprise. “She settled here a few moons back, when Berk grew calm again.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Pinebolt, either missing or ignoring the interruption. She gave a warm smile, and Elsa looked a little less nervous in response. “I’m Pinebolt Jorgensen, and this is my husband Burplout and my son Wartlout. I’m sure that you know Spitelout – Burplout is his brother.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Elsa replied, whole body still wound as tightly as a string. Perhaps it was easier to not be afraid of Vikings when you had Red Deaths to contend with, or perhaps Hiccup had just missed the worst of it whilst he was still unconscious. “You are from Berk?”

“A few years back,” said Burplout. “But you know what they say. You can take the Viking out of Berk–”

“But you can’t take the Berkian out of the Viking,” finished Spitelout. With a cheer, the brothers crashed their helmets together, the sound ringing around the hall.

Pinebolt watched them with a look of amusement, shaking her head. As they were still straightening their helmets, Snotlout managed to reach the table, pink-cheeked and almost panting. He was still holding his platter, but it had by now been stripped down to two tankards.

“You want to try that again?” said Spitelout, looking from the mugs to the number of people at the table pointedly.

“Where’s Brynnhild?” asked Pinebolt, as Snotlout stomped back off towards the barrels again. “Haven’t seen her yet this evening.”

“Waiting for the last boat to come in for the night,” said Spitelout. He picked up a stray bit of bread crust off the table and scraped up some of the remaining dripping. “I’ll save her a steak, don’t you worry. Adelaide’s with her too. She’s turning out to be a dab hand on the nets.”

“She’d be... what, eight by now?”

“Come spring,” he replied. “But she’s doing well for her age. They both are! Snotlout’s officially a man, as of Dragon Island, and–”

“Oh,” said Burplout. “Killed his first dragon already? Not the arena, though?”

It was Spitelout who seemed to realise what he had said, with a glance across at Hiccup. Though it grated to hear that enthused tone that Burplout used to speak of killing dragons, Hiccup gritted his teeth. It had been different, even not all that long ago. Not all that long ago, even he had thought that he would want to kill dragons. That had only lasted until he had met one.

Clearing his throat, Spitelout lifted one of the tankards. “On Dragon Island,” he said. “One of the Red Deaths. And there’ll be something special in being one of the last of that tradition, as well.”

Hiccup let out his breath in a low, relieved huff. It would be true, he hoped, that he and his friends would be the last Berkians to enter adulthood by the death of a dragon. They would have to find something new, though that thought was exciting in its own right. The thought that he was one of them, though, was still strange, the disconnect between the Red Death and other dragons so sharp that it felt as if he had not killed a _dragon_ as such. The Red Death was something else, something worse. What did you call something that killed dragons?

Other than a human, of course.

“Aye,” said Burplout finally. “There’s a point.”

Behind him, Ruffnut and Tuffnut were climbing up onto a table and cupping their hands around their mouths. This being not entirely strange behaviour for the twins, Hiccup ignored it at first.

“Oi!” shouted Ruffnut. “Yak’s ready!”

“Co-ome and get it!” added Tuffnut.

“All _right_ ,” said Wartlout, on his feet and slipping into the crowd before anyone else at the table could react. With a roll of his eyes, Burplout climbed out from the bench behind him.

“I suppose I’d best catch him before he tries to bring back a haunch. How well-done do you want yours?” he added, to Pinebolt.

Raising an eyebrow, she turned round on the bench as well, and went to stand up. It did not happen on the first attempt, and she stuck out a hand for her husband to take on the second. “I think I can choose my own steak,” she said firmly.

Burplout looked over his shoulder to Spitelout and gave an exaggerated shrug.

“You’d best do as the lady wishes,” said Spitelout. “Else you’ll never hear the end of it. Snotlout!” he stood up and put his hands on his hips as he scanned the crowd. “Where are you?”

There was a general press in the direction of the yak, but Hiccup intended to wait until the worst of it had already passed before trying to stand up and join in. The floor of the Hall was wet and muddy from so many boots, and a trencher and steak, whilst an appealing meal, would not exactly help his balance.

He did not expect his father to wait as well, though, nor to clear his throat awkwardly and lean across. “Elsa,” he said, in his most diplomatic tone of voice. “I hope you’ll forgive me for not giving them the full story straight away. I imagine Berk is... rather a lot to take in nowadays.”

Elsa nodded. Hiccup tried to lean back, out of the way of what was passing for a conversation.

Stoick paused for a moment, then continued gravely. “And I’d appreciate if you could, well, be careful about Pinebolt. She is – you’ve seen, I’m sure. I don’t want to risk anything happening.”

The words stung as Hiccup heard them, and he looked at his father incredulously. Elsa did not flinch, and almost did not tremble as she nodded and rose smoothly to her feet. “I will not endanger her,” she said quietly.

Without waiting for a response, she turned towards the door, head held high and hands clenched at her sides. Hiccup hissed through his teeth and scrambled to get to his feet in turn, banging one knee on the underside of the table as he did so.

“What are you doing?” said Stoick, looking him up and down.

“I’m going to check on Elsa,” said Hiccup. It came out sharper than he had expected, but he did not even feel particularly sorry for it. Anger bubbled under his skin, thrummed in his ears. A year ago he might have raised a scene, five years ago he most likely would have endured it without saying anything, but now he would not take it. He finally managed to get his feet under him, dodged his father’s outstretched hand, and took off after her at the fastest walk he could manage.

The wind was so strong that it almost buffeted the door open into him, and Seaweed Frysen did not look particularly impressed at having to wrestle it closed again afterwards. Rain slapped into Hiccup’s face, and he had to shade his eyes to even peer around through the almost-horizontal sheets. Not quite cold enough to snow, not yet, but there would be one hell of a frost come morning.

For a moment, he could not see her, certainly not looking towards the main body of the town. When he looked towards the edge of the forest, however, he caught sight of a pale figure and movement against the dark trees, and was willing to bet that it was her.

“Elsa!” he shouted, or at least tried to shout. Mostly, he opened his mouth and the rain got in.

For Thor’s sake, what had his father thought that Elsa was going to do? The only time he had seen her use her powers deliberately was to cause a small snowfall up at the arena – and possibly that morning, working in the garden. Despite the enthusiasm of the twins, she had not recreated her ice armour either. Most people did not even mention it now, as if they forgot until someone raised the matter once again. Perhaps they did forget; if they did, it was probably for the best.

The most direct route from the Hall to the treeline was a steep slope, and Hiccup doubted that he had time to go down the steps proper without risking losing Elsa altogether. Taking a deep breath, he half-walked, half-slid down the hill. With each step, his foot would slide down another foot or so, leaving a muddy streak on the already churned-up grass. It was bad enough on his right foot, and momentarily terrifying on his left. He stumbled down the last few feet, stayed upright more by determination than skill, and caught himself on the wall of the nearest house.

This was probably another of those moments which was going to seem funny in hindsight. Or hugely embarrassing. At least flatter ground seemed easier in comparison, and he made for the forest as quickly as he was able, not even feeling the cold through righteous indignation.

He was going to have to speak to his father about this. Not that he much _wanted_ to, not that he even thought it was going to go particularly well, but someone had to say something and Hiccup was the only option right now. Even if Stoick had asked them – _both_ of them, not just Elsa as if she were somehow to blame – not to mention Elsa’s powers for now, it would have annoyed him. Implying that she could hurt Pinebolt was ridiculous. At least with the dragons there was something for him to draw his ridiculous conclusions _from_.

The throbbing in his head was starting to centralise behind his eyes again, and Hiccup rubbed one with the heel of his hand. That did not help either. It pounded in time with his anger as he reached the stretch of treeline where he seen Elsa, looked for footprints, and found exactly nothing.

He cupped both hands around his mouth and shouted as loudly as he could. “Elsa! Elsa!”

She had been able to move through the trees more quietly than him when her leg had been in a cast. Somehow, he doubted that he was going to find her if she did not want to be found. There was no sign of her, no trail to follow, and Hiccup almost wanted to scream in frustration.

“Elsa!” he shouted instead, trying to summon up generations of his family’s ability to bellow. “It’s only _me_!”

He considered adding that his father could be as much of a muttonhead as anyone else at times, but refrained from that as well. It would probably be better not to go shouting things like that about the chief, even if you were said chief’s son.

If he was honest with himself, Hiccup did not even know where to start looking. This part of the forest was nowhere near the cove, nor even the sinkhole where he had first met Elsa, and he had no way of knowing if there was somewhere else out here that she would consider a safe place to hide. She had lived in the Wildlands for years, but Wildlings did not care for borders and boundaries in the way that Berk and Arendelle attempted to. She probably knew these woods better than he did.

“If I get catch cold,” he added under his breath, thinking of his father, “I’m blaming you.”

The only thing that he could think of was to move away from the village. What other options would Elsa have? He put Berk to his back and walked, the trees providing some relief from the wind and rain but nowhere near enough for his liking. The wool around his leg was soaked through and starting to rub, becoming worse with every step, but he ignored it and tried not to limp too badly as he continued.

“Elsa,” he called, and heard his voice becoming just a little bit piteous as he did so. This wasn’t just undignified, it was getting hopeless. He needed Toothless’s help. Whacking an overheard branch with his cane, Hiccup was about ready to turn on his heel when he saw the smear of ice across the trunk of one of the trees.

It wasn’t frost. The shape was like a handprint of water or a streak of blood, fingers brushed over the surface. Hiccup hurried towards it, looked around and caught sight of a patch of grass with ice on it. No, not grass – spines of ice broke from the ground, looking almost like ice at a glance but harder, sharper. Heart in his throat, Hiccup turned towards them, and when nothing more came into sight simply continued in the same direction.

The air was getting colder, although he was not sure that it was not the gathering night until he saw his breath begin to fog in front of him. Wind blew directly into his face. Shielding his eyes against it, he ducked under the bough of a tree and promptly walked into a sheet of ice.

It was higher than his head, so clear that he could not see it unless he looked for the distorted view it gave of the world beyond. In the small clearing beyond he could see Elsa, pacing back and forth and wringing her hands, head bowed.

Hiccup banged his first against the ice; it did not give, but Elsa jumped and whipped round to face him. “There you are!” he called, hoping that she could hear. “Come out!”

She shook her head, backing away again. There was no sign of a gap, and Hiccup started to walk around the sheet of ice, keeping one hand on it. It stung his palm, but he kept going, looking for a doorway in the wall.

“My father–” he began.

“Your father is right,” called Elsa, her voice ringing slightly from the ice. She stayed at the centre of her ring, turning to follow him. “This is with the trollwort, Hiccup. It can’t be controlled.”

“You are not dangerous,” he shouted in frustration. Finally, he found an end to the ring of ice, as if it was one sheet wrapped around and crossed over. If he breathed in, he could just about squeeze through the gap, even if it left him staggering into the ring as he wrestled his cane through with him. “Elsa, you _aren’t_ , just because you can do something that the rest of us can’t. It doesn’t _matter_.”

“It should,” she said. Her hands were still clutched to her chest. In the pouring rain, he could not help but see that she was not so thin as she was, that though she would still be called thin by most Vikings he could no longer see the sharp lines of her collarbones, her lower ribs. He just wished that he could take away the fear that did still mark her. “It is different, Hiccup. I am different. And perhaps your father is right, and I should leave for a while, just until–”

“Until Pinebolt gives birth?” said Hiccup incredulously. “And what then? Withera will be due come spring. And by then there’ll be more women having children. Life doesn’t stop, Elsa. Please don’t try to hide from it.”

“I could hurt someone,” said Elsa.

“You won’t,” said Hiccup. He tried to take her hands but she shied away, pleading with her eyes. “Elsa, I believe in you. You have been here moons and all that your magic has done is given us an arena full of snow. If you need trollwort, we can gather in. If you need to come out here,” he gestured to the woods around them, “you can. But you don’t need to run. I believe that you can control it.”

Elsa shook her head, slowly, fingers twisting together until her knuckles seemed to turn whiter than ever. But she did not step away as Hiccup edged closer; she merely kept her eyes turned away, her shoulders hunched. “I cannot believe it.”

“Then I’ll believe for both of us,” said Hiccup firmly.

He reached out and took her hand, peeling it away from her chest. There were raw red marks around her wrists, but she did not seem to notice when he brushed his thumb over them. Elsa’s eyes looked red, but it was hard to tell if she had been crying when it was raining.

“Now, will you come home? Otherwise Astrid will probably come looking for me, and I’ll never hear the end of it.”

It was not enough to make her smile, but she nodded, at least. The wall of ice around them went from jagged to ragged as the rain bore down on it, and the gap where Hiccup had slid in grew wider as it melted away. Even so, they had to climb out again, and Elsa looked at the ring fearfully when Hiccup went to tug her away.

“It will melt.” He had to believe it, at least, and he was pretty sure that he managed to make it sound as if he did. It would have to do so sooner or later, and in the meantime at least chunks of ice were not really dangerous. The worst it could probably do was injure someone’s pride if they walked into it as Hiccup had. “Now let’s go, before I dissolve.”

 

 

 

 

 

Usually, getting home this wet would mean stripping just inside the doorway so as to avoid leaving a full trail of puddles throughout the house. That was not really an option nowadays, but Hiccup leant against the wall to take off his boot and sock, grimacing at his wrinkled toes. Apparently the remaining boot was not as waterproof as it had been earlier in the year.

Elsa had not spoken on the way back, and did not start now as she slipped off into her room with her skirt dripping and her hair a sodden mess. Once the curtain fell closed behind her again, Hiccup risked slipping off his shirt and wringing it out over the bucket by the doorway, then hurriedly slipped it back on again. He still wasn’t doing the same with his leggings, though.

He dripped his way upstairs, dried off, and only started shivering as he was pulling on dry clothes instead. The house was mostly dark, the fire died down, and it managed to feel lonelier with two of them inside than it had when Hiccup had been here by himself.

He tucked his prosthetic under his arm and opted for the crutches to get back downstairs. There was mud crusted in his foot, and unless he wanted to rust that was going to need cleaning straight away. Occasionally it seemed that Gobber had a point about the metal. His stump was sore, but the skin was not broken, and he would just have to be careful the following day.

Roast yak wasn’t looking so good now. He made his way back downstairs and set about building up the fire, coaxing the flame back out of the embers. The curtain to Elsa’s room swished again.

“I am not very good with the fire,” she said, with a faint note of humour.

“One of my first real jobs at the forge was building up the wood,” Hiccup replied. “Gobber set fire to more than one of those wooden hands of his over the years.” He gave the wood another poke, and felt a satisfying roll of warm air. By the time that Stoick and Gobber got back, the room might actually be warm once again. He slid back down onto the bench and sighed at the state of his foot. “At least I don’t have as many toes to dry between,” he said.

Elsa sat down beside him, not looking round, and he was reminded sharply of the night before. Only that time, they hadn’t been sleeping for their nightmares.

“I never did explain what cousin meant, did I?” said Hiccup, as brightly as he could manage.

Elsa looked round with a slight frown, running her fingers through her hair before catching herself and pulling her comb from her belt instead. That had been one thing which he had made sure she had, even if it had a couple of broken teeth and was looking worn. For Snoggletog, perhaps, he would be able to carve her a new one.

There were usually slates and chalk sitting in strange places around the house, much to Stoick’s frustration over the years. Hiccup fished around under the bench and turned one up, chalk tied on to stop it from rolling away or leaving strange marks on the floor.

“All right,” he said, “so here’s me.” He scrawled his name at the bottom of the slate, then started to add the lines and names as he went on. “There was my mother and Stoick, and Stoick’s brother Heavy, and their father Hulking. Hulking’s sister was Hellion, and _she_ married Crudlout. Then Spitelout and Burplout are her sons, so technically they’re my father’s first cousins, and Wartlout is my second cousin. But cousin sort of... means everyone, in a way.”

Beyond second cousins, it all got a bit hazy. Besides, there were always cousins-by-marriage and cousins-of-cousins, and they were still _family_ even if they weren’t necessarily your clan. Elsa looked over the names, reached out to touch the chalk lines, and rubbed the chalk thoughtfully between her fingertips.

Something dawned. “Can you read this?”

“I read when I was young, I think,” said Elsa. “I do not think I can now.”

Berkians were considered odd among Vikings for how many of them could read, even if that reading was often limited to the Book of Dragons. Hiccup knew that some other islands only had a handful of people that read, and Johann had commented on it in the past. Arendelle was a different beast, more like the southern kingdoms; _some_ people learnt to read, but they were usually the wealthy, or those employed by them.

At least Hiccup had a few more books than just the Book of Dragons to choose from. “Maybe you could learn again,” he said.

Another ghost of a smile. “Perhaps. I used to read with my sister.”

It felt strange to hear her volunteer information about what he could not help thinking of as her former life. Or possibly her first life, of several. Even now, he was aware that Elsa knew more about him than he did about her.

He flipped the slate over, and wrote her name, then drew a defiant line. “What was her name?”

She hesitated, for a moment, then spoke the name with a careful touch. “Anna.”

With careful strokes, Hiccup wrote Anna’s name next to Elsa’s in the centre of the slate. He couldn’t quite be sure of the spelling – there were variants of the name around Arendelle in the last generation or so, thanks to the princess making the name popular – but he took a guess. Letting the chalk drop, he offered the slate to Elsa, and she accepted it as if it would break in her hands.

“I remember where I found the trollwort,” said Hiccup, stretching out his hands in front of him. What he wanted most right now was to sleep, preferably with Toothless in his room with him. But this was probably part of having siblings as well. “If you want to go get some more in a day or two. Preferably when the weather is... less terrible.”

Snow could be easier to handle than the rain, sometimes; if you had the right cloak it would slide off rather than soaking straight in. And a dragon would help.

“I would appreciate that,” said Elsa quietly.

They sat for a while in silence, as the fire established itself again and the house warmed up. Hiccup’s stomach rumbled loudly enough to be heard, breaking the silence, and Elsa laughed and went to retrieve from food from the pantry for them both. It might not have been fresh yak, but it did include the last of the quince preserve, and did not include watching Snotlout try and fail to transport a full platter of tankards.

He hadn’t really started to appreciate meals without the twins trying to start food fights before spending time at the arena with them. It was nice to eat without the risk of having half a mackerel shoved down his shirt, he had to say.


	9. Chapter 9

Hiccup woke up the next morning with the distinct feeling that his brain was trying to exit his face through his left eyesocket. He groaned, pulled the blanket up to cover his eyes, and spent a good few moments contemplating waiting in bed until it passed. If it had not been for the fact that he needed to talk to his father, he might have been tempted to do it. As it was, Hiccup grimaced and rolled himself to a seated position, and just kept his eyes closed as he squirmed into some clothes instead.

Anyone who lived in Berk probably knew the fine art of getting dressed without getting out from under the blankets. It was just one of those skills which came in useful around here.

His left leg was still sore from the previous evening, and he tried an extra sock before buckling the metal foot into place. It felt strange, but he wasn't sure whether it was the good sort of strange or not, and figured that it could not much hurt to try.

Even the firelight seemed too bright for his eyes as he made his way downstairs. This was going to be a long day.

“Hiccup!” called Gobber. Hiccup winced slightly. “Nice of you to join us. The twins have been and gone already.”

That was enough to finish waking him up. Clinging to the bannister, Hiccup turned in alarm. “What have they done?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Gobber, waving him down. “They just came by to say that they can't go to the arena today. I mean the academy.”

“I've given up telling them what it's called.”

“Well, whatever it is. Their parents need them to help with picking out the yaks for the slaughter.”

Every Snoggletog, the twins ended up with new yak-hair jackets, which somehow never managed to last them the full year before they were given up, traded away, or just plain destroyed. Hiccup was not sure how long it had taken them to connect the jackets with the annual slaughter and the celebrations that followed.

Relaxing, he continued the rest of the way down and paused just at the foot of the stairs to rub his eyes. “Is my Dad around?” he summoned as much determination as he could. “I need to talk to him.”

“He's just out by the woodshed,” said Gobber, pointing to the door with his hook. “Will you be joining us for porridge?”

There was no sign of Elsa either just yet, though Hiccup was not sure exactly what to make of that. It was hard to think about his stomach right now, either. “I'm good, thanks. I'll take some sandwiches with me today.”

The wind hit him like a wall as he stepped outside. Hiccup squeezed his eyes shut for a few full heartbeats until he could manage to peel them open and look around again. There were specks of rain or sleet in the air, and the wind knifed through his clothes as he made his way round to the side of the house. The woodshed doors were wide open, and his father was bent over, rooting around inside. He supposed that it had not made the worse place to sleep from time to time.

“Er, Dad?” he went to lean on the door, only for it to swing out of the way.

Stoick ducked out of the woodshed and looked around as if checking who was addressing him, then straightened his helmet and grinned. “Ah, good morning, Hiccup. Sleep well?”

“Not bad,” he lied, mostly out of the habit after the last moon of nightmares. “Look, Dad, can I talk to you?”

Frowning, Stoick straightened up. “If this is about the dragons,” he began grimly.

“No, it's not,” said Hiccup. Despite the temptation, he managed not to snap. “It's about Elsa. Dad, you can't _talk_ to her like that.”

“I asked her to be careful, nothing more,” Stoick replied. He pushed the door closed and gave Hiccup a rather sharp look. “It was not an unreasonable request.”

“And then? I didn't hear you asking Gobber to be careful in the forge,” he said, with a gesture in the appropriate direction. “Or asking Astrid to be careful with her axes. Or asking the twins not to... well, act like the twins.”

The anger was threatening to get the better of him again, and Hiccup swallowed it back carefully. He wrapped both hands around the head of his cane and looked down at the ground for a moment, waiting for his father to reply.

It was a moment before Stoick said anything. “Hiccup,” he said carefully, “you have to admit that's a little different. I was just saying–”

“You were saying that she could hurt Pinebolt,” said Hiccup. It came out sharp and angry, and he still could not bring himself to look up for fear of his father's expression. “And that isn't fair on her.”

“I wasn't saying she was going to hurt her,” said Stoick. Hiccup flinched in anticipation of anger there, but there was much less than he had expected, and far more defensiveness. “Just that she could, if she wasn't careful. That... magic of hers is quite something.”

“And – and maybe her magic _can_ hurt someone,” he said. He had seen what it could do, after all – the battle against the Red Deaths would have been enough, even if he had not seen her work with Astrid to shatter solid iron. The ice was nothing more than a tool, though, and how a tool was used always depended on whose hands it was in. “But that doesn't mean that Elsa _could_.”

“There's no difference there, Hiccup.”

Of course there was. Hiccup gritted his teeth, then regretted it as pain stabbed up through his temple. “There is Dad. Just... trust me, there is. Elsa wouldn't hurt anyone. And talking to her like she could, it...”

He tried to gather his thoughts from the air, but was not even sure that he could wrap words around them. The terror that had wound into Elsa, the fear of herself that had been put there by everyone that had recoiled from her over the years, had been so sharp the night before that it had literally enclosed her. How could he even explain that to Stoick?

“It's not right,” he said, and it sounded like a limp excuse for a reason.

At first, Stoick did not reply, and Hiccup watched cautiously for fear of what might be about to follow. He was not sure whether that was an acceptable way to talk to either his father or his chief. “I see,” said Stoick finally. “And you want me to talk to her about this?”

For a moment, he considered it, but he had not seen Elsa again this morning to know what sort of spirits she might be in. Hiccup shook his head. “No. Just... please, don't talk to her like that again? It upset her.”

Stoick regarded him levelly. “Aye. I'll remember that.”

Hiccup's relief was so great that he actually did not notice for a moment that his father had deferred to him on something. As it occurred to him, he pressed his lips together and tried not to look too much like that had just dawned on him, then gestured over his shoulder back towards the door. “I... should go. I should go. Got things I need to do today.  Yeah.”

Before he could manage the remarkable feat of digging himself any deeper a hole than he already had, he turned, and all but fled the scene back indoors. As the wind threw shut the door behind him again, Elsa emerged from her room, looking a little paler than usual with shadows beneath her eyes.

“Good morning,” he said, wiping the icy sludge off his cheek. “How are you doing?”

Elsa shrugged, wrapping one arm across herself. “I have been worse. How are you?”

“Stop my head from exploding and we're good,” he said. “I was planning on going glass-hounding today. Could you give me a hand?” She looked at him curiously, probably for nothing more than his own made-up terms, and he corrected himself quickly. “Gathering glass. I know a good place.”

“And he won't tell me where,” said Gobber, sawing off chunks of bread and stacking them up in a basket.  “So consider yourself honoured.”

“I've got to have some secrets, Gobber.”

“Then I am honoured,” said Elsa. “Shall I bring a basket?”

“Probably a good idea,” he said. “Though not for food this time.” It did not manage to bring a smile to her face once again, but he supposed that it was a weak joke in any case.

 

 

 

 

 

The first stop was at the Jorgensons', to find Snotlout sitting on the front step of the house and scowling, a mug of soup clutched in his hands and a blanket draped around his shoulders. He barely deigned to look at Hiccup as he and Elsa approached over the damp ground, apparently preferring to stare at the muddy patch in front of him instead.

“Good morning,” said Hiccup pointedly. “Strange to see you up this early.”

“Stupid dragon got me into a habit of it,” said Snotlout. From him, that might have been more a term of endearment than an insult.

“Say, we're not planning on going up to the academy today, so how about you take a day off?” said Hiccup. “I'm sure that Wartlout is dying to be shown around.”

Snotlout wrinkled his nose and gave a non-committal grunted. Resisting the urge to look over at Elsa, because it would probably just result in him wanting to roll his eyes, Hiccup tried to press on.

“You could talk to your mother, or someone down at the docks, see if they can deliver some fish up there. I'm sure the dragons would appreciate it.”

“Sure.”

“Right.” Giving up, he turned to Elsa again. “And with that scintillating morning conversation... let's go talk to Astrid.”

The Hoffersons had clung to the respect of the village just enough for them to still be living fairly close to the centre of town, rather than off on the outskirts where the threat of dragon attacks had once been greater. The house looked quiet, shutters closed and nobody sulking on the front step, but Hiccup had barely knocked on the door when it snapped open to reveal Carr Hofferson. The Terrible Terror was perched on one shoulder, tail curled around to the back of his neck, and Carr grinned broadly.

“Hiccup! Good morning, lad. And Elsa, too,” he added, with a nod in Elsa's direction. “If you're after Astrid, I'm afraid she's not quite done with breakfast yet. But–”

Astrid pushed under her father's arm, presumably having started over as soon as she heard Hiccup's name. “Hey. Is everything all right?”

“I don't only come to talk to you when there's trouble, you know,” said Hiccup. Astrid raised an eyebrow, and her father chose the moment to raise his hands in the air and walk away from the conversation altogether. “Not always.”

“Sure. So, is everything all right?” she repeated, leaning against the doorframe and giving Elsa a frustratingly knowing look.

Giving up, Hiccup shook his head. “Can you take care of the dragons today? Just feed them, let them stretch their wings a bit. Take Stormfly for a flight if you want, I don't mind.”

“You're not going up today?” said Astrid, frowning.

Even he would admit that it was the first time since at least the Red Death that he had not seen Toothless first thing every morning, but he held back from the pain it threatened to let rise. “You know where the everything is, right? I asked Snotlout to see that some fish gets taken up. And he will,” Hiccup added, before Astrid could even roll her eyes, “because you know how he really is about Hookfang.”

Snotlout could pretend all that he wanted, but if nothing else Hiccup was aware of how much _he_ cared about Toothless. And once you knew what that felt like, it was easy to recognise it in others as well. Even Astrid nodded.

“Fishlegs might be able to help you today, if his mother doesn't need him,” added Hiccup. Memories flickering, he rubbed his temple for a moment. “If his sisters are willing to help, I don't see any problem letting them either. Apparently they want to see the hatchlings again anyway.”

“You're making me babysit?”

“It could be worse,” he said. “I could be giving you the twins.”

If he was being wholly truthful, Hiccup would probably admit that he would be less concerned with Fishlegs's sisters around dragons than he would be with the twins. At least they wouldn't be feeding them random items. Astrid went to speak, then seemed to pause and consider his point, and shrugged instead.

“That's the spirit,” said Hiccup.

He went to turn away when Astrid caught him by the arm and tugged him back round again. Fully expecting her to continue teasing him about the suitability of his plans for the day, he tried to put on the sort of innocent expression that had fooled no-one for about seven or eight years now, and was completely unprepared for her to kiss him on the corner of the mouth instead. By the time that he realised he should probably attempt to reciprocate or at least acknowledge the action, Astrid had pulled away into the house and was closing the door on him again, wearing that smile which he could not read in the slightest.

 

 

 

 

 

He and Elsa walked in silence at first, the rain-sleet thinning out after a while around them, then managed to make rather stilted conversation swapping words back and forth for species of trees and the few hardy plants that were still clinging on around them.

As they reached the coast, however, Elsa stopped and frowned around them. “You find glass here?”

“Pretty close by,” said Hiccup, smiling for probably the first time since they had left the house. He took a bearing from a stone pillar out to sea, and had to admit that his cane was useful for lining it up with the distinctively crooked mountain birch opposite. “In the past, we had to trade glass with Trader Johann, right? Oh, you haven't met him, he'll be round in spring. But we had to get it from Arendelle, or even from other islands. We just can't make it here, haven't got the right sand or furnaces or anything. But then, a few years ago, I was poking around up here...”

Pushing past the tree and the bird cherry bush which had grown erratically around it, Hiccup yelped as the ground gave way beneath him and he slithered down several feet of damp, gravelly slope.

“I'm all right!” he called quickly, poking his cane back up the path he had just slid down as he heard Elsa pushing aside the branches above. “Just watch your footing. Ah, yeah.”

More light trickled in as Elsa nudged through the bird cherry and looked down in astonishment. Hiccup was standing in a stony gulley that ran gently down to a tunnel opening, deep enough for him to be standing fully beneath the level of her feet. “How did you find this?”

“Fell down it,” he said matter-of-factly. “It works surprisingly well. Anyway, I found this place, and that tunnel,” he added, with a jab at the crooked doorway, “leads down to a little cove. And there's glass there.”

He couldn't do much to actually help her down, but Elsa paused thoughtfully at the top of the slope before taking small, skidding steps down it. Even so, her feet went out from beneath her, and he had just enough time to see her eyes go wide before she stumbled into him and almost knocked them both over backwards.

“I'm sorry,” said Elsa breathlessly, pulling away and backing up. “I didn't mean–”

“It's fine,” said Hiccup, laughing. “You still did better than me. Come on.”

He waved her over to the tunnel entrance and pulled away a few creeping roots that were hanging over it. The first time that he had explored it, he had not had a lantern with him, but this time he had put one into the basket which Elsa now carried, and he fished it out.

“Usually I come down here not long after the main harvest,” he said. There was a small shelf of rock which was perfect for propping the lantern on, holding the door open with the side of his hand while he used the flint and steel. To judge from Elsa's frown, it was a moment before she caught on to what he intended and went to help. “Don't worry, I got it. Done this a few times. To be honest, there... aren't too many people who could probably fit down here with me,” he added. The fire caught, and he cupped his hands carefully around the lantern for a moment to make sure it caught before closing the door. “There we go. There are a couple of tight spots.”

Whether Elsa was actually as interested in what he was saying as he silence would seem to imply, he did not know, but there was a hint of a smile on her face and the tiredness had gone from her eyes a bit. Lantern held in his left hand, he nodded for her to follow.

The first part of the passage was not too bad, with room above their heads even if it was not quite wide enough for them to walk side-by-side. The gravel beneath their feet was not so wet as to slide around underfoot, and it actually seemed a little less cold once they were out of reach of the wind.

“Were you looking for something, down here?” said Elsa. Her voice sounded slightly strange, caught in the walls of rock, as the passage curved round to the left and began to slope downwards.

He glanced round for a moment to give her a sheepish smile. “Trolls. Didn't find any, though.”

“In _Maruloet_ , they say that the trolls live in the mountains.”

“I think I remember hearing the same in Arendelle,” he said. He did not add that it had been the princess who had told him, some years ago now.  “In Berk, no-one's quite so sure.”

Elsa's voice sounded a little distant. “The Silver Priests said that if you were innocent, you would find your way back to Arendelle. But there was another. A woman, when I was young. She said it was the trolls who would bring you home, if your heart was true.”

He looked back again, in part to make sure that Elsa was still behind him, as the tunnel took a sharp turn. “I didn't think that the Silver Priests were into the idea of trolls.”

“They are not.”

He had to turn sideways to tuck himself around the corner, although it was not quite so narrow that they would have to breathe in. “Well, from what I remember of my history, the Silver Priests weren't around when Hamish the Second made peace with Arendelle a hundred and... something years ago.” He was pretty sure that it was the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of that peace agreement coming up, actually. Somewhere in the next decade or so. “And Arendelle has been there nearly as long as Berk has. So I guess the Priests are pretty new, in a way.”

He held out his hand for the basket, then Elsa followed him around the gap and into the next stretch of corridor.

“Watch out, the floor is pretty uneven here.” He wasn't going to make a joke about either of them injuring their ankles more. “It really starts to weave down now.”

The cave at sea level was probably still about thirty metres below them, and Hiccup had to admit that there were going to be a couple of the larger rock steps that were probably going to be interesting. But it wasn't a bad way to spend a morning, in any case.

“How does the glass get here?”

“That's a pretty good question,” Hiccup admitted. “I think that it must get carried in by the waves because of the line of the tide or something. We're pretty much on the north-west of the island here, closest to Dragon Island. As for how it got into the sea, I didn't used to know, but now I'm thinking that it might be something to do with Gronckles.”

“Gronckles?” said Elsa, carefully stepping over a ridge of stalagmites across the path.

Despite himself, he could not help a grin. “Oh, yeah. Gronckles.”

 

 

 

 

 

The explanation of what Meatlug was apparently able to do was enough to fill the rest of the journey down to sea level. Further down, the tunnels began to branch off more, but Hiccup had marked them with chalk as he found his way around in the first place and brightened up some of the duller ones on his way down this time.

As they stepped out onto the small beach, though, Hiccup fell silent to let the awe on Elsa's face speak for itself. The narrow cave entrance gave way to almost a full circle of water, and the beach around it all glittered with fragments of glass.

It was as if someone had taken every stone and replaced it with a worn-smooth lump of glass – mostly clear, but there were green and blue and even red chunks among them all. They squeaked and ground against each other underfoot, the smallest ones little more than pebbles, the largest a good six inches in diameter. A few still had something that could be called edges, even if they were rounded now, but most were ovals or spheres. The light of the torch danced in them, and the sunlight outside rippled through the waves to much the same effect.

“ _Kelaa aj atvaas_ ,” said Elsa softly. She bent down and picked up a handful of the smaller lumps of glass, and let them glitter down through her fingers once again. “You found this?”

“Yup,” he replied with a grin. It was a trek to get down, but it was worth it for the beauty of the place once you got down here. “Figured that instead of trading for glass, I could get some larger lumps from down here. Here.”

He sat down on the glass next to her, not particularly caring that he was going to get damp as he did so. Poking through some of the smaller stones, he found one about the size of his fist, slightly more flattened than a sphere, and held it up to glance through.

“Like this one,” he said, passing it to Elsa. “See that rock over there? I use that one to check by. Some of these are shaped in such a way that they magnify it. Make it look bigger. Those are the ones I use to make the spyglasses.”

The same rock which he had used to sight for the tunnel was framed neatly by the cave entrance. Elsa held the stone up, moving it back and forth and tilting it to see the effects, look of amazement slowly melting into a smile. She handed it back to Hiccup, who slipped it into the basket that sat on the stones between them.

“It is beautiful,” she said. “You should bring Astrid down here.”

“Is that a girl thing?” he said. Elsa just laughed.

 

 

 

 

 

They ate on the glass beach, bread and salt pork and strong-tasting cheese, before picking through the stones in search of large clear pieces that had the potential to work as spyglass lenses. Some of the smaller coloured chips made him think of the garnet that Astrid had found, and whether there might be things that could be done with them as well. He ended up digging up bits of blue glass, a popular colour and always prized, and wrapping those up in a handkerchief to take back as well.

The climb back up was a little more inelegant than the way down had been, and had involved a couple of steps whose difficulty Hiccup had not really considered once he had his metal foot to worry about. At least he did not quite struggle enough to have to accept the boosts that Elsa offered to give him.

“Like helping my sister to get food,” she said at one point, as he brushed dirt off his front and got to his feet again.

“I had to get a chair,” Hiccup replied.

At some point between sea level and the surface, it must have grown colder again. They emerged into snow, only stray flakes at first between the branches overhead, then heavier as Hiccup staggered out of the bushes and attempted to look gentlemanly as he held aside a branch for Elsa to follow. It probably didn't work as well when she was the one carrying the basket of glass, but at least he could say that he tried.

The snow was getting heavier as they turned back towards the village. Hiccup pulled his cape closer around his shoulders, and almost went to check that Elsa was all right before remembering how she felt about the cold. The long skirt and sleeves which she favoured seemed to be nothing more than a preference, and there were not even goosebumps rising on her arms.

Of course, his main reason for not telling anyone else about the beach was that it was a nightmare to get to, and that though it seemed a lot of glass at first glance he had a distinct suspicion that it would very quickly disappear if everyone who could fit down the tunnel started to attempt to do so. Second might just have been a bit of pride, of not wanting to share his find with the people of Berk whom he generally loved but who also occasionally annoyed the hell of out him.

The third reason was that if the twins got too interested, they might find out about how easy it was to start enormous fires using the jeweller’s rouge from further south that he had traded with Johann for. There had already been one occasion in the smithy that could nearly be referred to as an incident, and Hiccup did not particularly want there to be any more.

By the time that his father returned home, apparently from helping to clear out and fix up one of the empty houses to make them fit for Burplout and family, Hiccup was curled up in one of the large chairs with a bowl of water, sturdy gloves, a basket of glass, and a bag of pumice found on entirely different beach some years ago, the tunnel to which had since caved in. Mercifully, Stoick had seen this enough years running that he just shook his head and moved on.

It was relaxing, surprisingly so considering it was the first craftwork of any sort that he had done in months. Helping to design his foot had not quite counted, and Gobber had shooed him out of the smithy just for hanging around too much, let alone actually trying to get involved. Not that he would get many done by Snoggletog, but there would probably be enough for them to be scattered around and for the usual games to be played, and if even Astrid was winding him up about how many there were, it was probably getting to the point that there were enough. Perhaps a different trick would be in order in the near future.

 

 

 

 

 

“Hiccup!”

The following morning started with Stoick’s voice filling the house. Hiccup jerked awake, tried to get himself facing out of the pillow, and managed to pitch himself out of bed and onto the floor instead. He managed to sit up and was still looking around in confusion as his father thundered up the stairs, appearing in the doorway like a particularly angry force of nature.

“Hiccup, get up!” Stoick crossed to grab Hiccup by the shoulders and pull him to his feet, eliciting an undignified yelp as he did so. “Wartlout’s gone missing.”

“What?” He was still trying to filter out the fragments of his dreams which seemed determined to filter through. Since his dreams had involved trying to round up chickens, a number of which had inexplicably been sporting blond braids and cackling like Thorstons, this was not overly difficult but still something of a feat at this time in the morning.

Hiccup found himself propped upright, cane tucked into his hand as Stoick bundled his blankets back onto the bed again.

“Wartlout is missing. When he wasn’t there this morning, Snotlout presumed he had gone into his parents’ room, but he wasn’t there either. We need your help.”

At any other time, the statement was so absurd that it might have made him laugh. “My help? What am I supposed to have done with him?”

“To help find him,” said Stoick, as if Hiccup was missing some very obvious parts of the sentence. Hiccup, on the other hand, was not entirely sure that he had heard all of the conversation. “You and that dragon of yours.”

He said nothing, because if he tried then what he managed to come out with was probably going to be a commentary on how now, it seemed, the dragons were useful. Instead he nodded until he managed to come up with a more sensible response. “Sure, sure. Snotlout showed him around yesterday, I think. Probably just saw something interesting and went off to look for it again this morning.”

“Aye, well, Snotlout’s gone to gather the rest of those friends of yours. It’s cold out, and his cloak wasn’t taken. Come on!”

The last part was something of a bark once again, and Hiccup jumped slightly and raised up his free hand before sitting back down again and sliding over to his clothes-chest. Stoick turned and went downstairs again, and though Hiccup was not looking closely enough to pick out individual words he could hear a general susurration of talk going on. He dressed as quickly as he could, making sure that it was warm – if his father was commenting on the cold, then it was probably half-way to a blizzard outside – and grabbed the scabbard that he had been using for his cane while flying.

He made it downstairs in time to see the door swinging closed again, with Gobber standing in front of Pinebolt with his arms outstretched and Elsa standing aside looking bewildered. “Where’s Dad?” he said, reaching the bottom of the stairs.”

“Out looking for my son,” said Pinebolt briskly. She looked a little pale, but quite composed, and was certainly managing to glare at Gobber well enough. “Which I am more than capable of helping with.”

“All things considered,” said Gobber, managing to make it perfectly clear that he meant how heavily pregnant she was, “it would be best if you stayed here. Besides, if he comes back there’d best be someone here to meet him.”

“He is my _son_.”

“And his father and uncle and cousins are all out looking for him, and I will be too as soon as soon as I’m sure you’ll be waiting here in case the daft bugger has been hiding in someone’s woodshed and trots home looking for lunch.”

Unfortunately, Hiccup had not attempted to climb out of his window since the incident with the Red Death, and was not sure how the new foot might complicate matters. He made use of the moment to limp over to the pantry – his leg ached, though whether from cold or falling out of bed or something else entirely he could not quite say – and search around the back of the shelves for a stray pot of pickled herring. The amount of time any pickled herring spent in the pantry was directly linked to how long it was before Gobber found it, but on this occasion his luck was in and a small pot had fallen down the back of the shelves, possibly some time ago.

By the time that he re-emerged, Gobber had apparently managed to talk Pinebolt into sitting down, and was now in the process of asking Elsa to stay with her until they got back. Frowning, Hiccup made his way over, but before he could get any further than “Gobber, can I just–” he was once again picked up by the back of his shirt and physically hauled outside.

If he had not been fully awake before, he certainly was by the time that Gobber shut the door behind them. “Odin’s eyepatch!” said Hiccup, and was fumbling for the gloves he had tucked into his belt before Gobber had even finished putting him down.

“Come on, let’s get going,” said Gobber. How he was still walking around without covering his arms, Hiccup did not even want to guess, but he had at least conceded to wearing a woollen cap underneath his helmet. It had flaps that covered his ears. “I’m to make sure you don’t fall off the path on the way to the academy.”

Something which might yet prove to be necessary, as far as Hiccup could see. What had been fine, patchy snow the night before had now settled to a couple of inches deep, just enough to make it almost impossible to see where he was putting his feet. At least the wind was not too bad now, though. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to leave Elsa behind? With Pinebolt” he said. If there was anyone that could handle this amount of snow better than your average Berkian, it was going to be Elsa. “I mean, maybe someone else...”

“It was your father’s idea,” said Gobber, and possibly as a result of Hiccup rolling his eyes added: “But I agree. Wartlout doesn’t know who she is, and the last thing we need is the kid getting spooked.”

“She isn’t going to do anything!” Hiccup snapped.

“She’s got hands like icewater and feels the cold less than I do. She might not have to do anything if the boy’s already lost and scared,” said Gobber. “It’s the same reason we don’t want you lot going anywhere near him with the dragons. If you see him, tell one of us where he is. Now let’s get moving.”

A hook between the shoulderblades was not something that can easily be ignored, and though Hiccup could still feel the ripples of anger he squashed them down and started walking. He did not want to have the same conversation with Gobber as he had needed to have with Stoick, even if he wasn’t sure whether or not Gobber’s reasoning was based only on Elsa being a _stranger_ to Wartlout, and nothing to do with her magic.

The snow muffled everything around them and had already piled up inches deep in the feeding station. Hiccup could not bring himself to look at it as he trudged on, too close to thinking of eels and everything that seemed to be stacked against him. Instead he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as he made his way across the village.

“What happened?” he said to Gobber, stifling a yawn. “I mean, with Wartlout.”

“He and Snotlout were supposed to be sleeping in the main room,” Gobber replied. A patch of ice almost took Hiccup's feet out from under him, but Gobber caught him under the shoulders and propped him back up once again. His wooden leg was apparently not giving him any trouble. “Snotlout wakes up to find him gone, doesn't think too much of it until Pinebolt and Burplout emerge looking for him. It'd been almost an hour by then.”

That probably did mean that Wartlout had gone missing, then. Hiccup understood more than well enough the urge to explore, to find out about the world around them, but even he probably would have reconsidered when faced with this weather. It did not even have the good grace to be a storm – it was just the depths of winter getting a good grip on Berk. “Dad organising a search around the town?”

“No, he's got Spitelout on that. He'll be coming to see you lot off at the arena. Academy.”

The thought of his father being there should not have made Hiccup feel somehow nervous, but there was a sort of pressure about it that he had not quite been expecting. His palms started to feel a little damp inside his gloves. “Good to hear,” he muttered, even if he wasn't quite sure he believed himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three chapters have been spliced into two, for this chapter and the next.
> 
> I did promise that deeper plot was coming!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is huge, fair warning.

Footsteps crunched in the snow, and then Astrid ran up beside them. Her cheeks were pink, and she had her hands stuffed into her armpits even in the heavier tunic that she was wearing. “You heard?” she said, without preamble.

“Yeah,” he replied. “We'll need to split up, cover as much ground as possible, and we'll need to stay low enough that we'd see him. Oh, Odin,” he said sharply, coming to a halt. Gobber bumped into him hard enough to send him stumbling forwards, but he was too busy cursing himself. “Gobber, there's a tunnel entrance opened up under the firethorn bush nearest to the Thorston's house. Near where... where Astrid nearly caught Elsa that night.” He hoped that Gobber would knew where that was, that he would not have to explain too much further. It made him queasy to think how easily that night could have gone wrong. “It's large enough to get down. Leads to a sinkhole, no other tunnels leading out.”

“I'll get someone to check it,” said Gobber, but made no sign to turn back. “First, let's get you to the arena. You'll see a lot more from up there than we will from down here.”

“If we can see through the snow,” said Astrid grimly. She pushed her snow-strewn bangs out of her eyes then put her hands under her arms again.

Gobber grunted vaguely in assent.

With Astrid there, Hiccup did not quite feel that he could bring up the subject of Elsa. It seemed strange to him that both Stoick and Gobber thought it was not the best thing to have her looking for Wartlout with the others. She probably knew the land better than most of them did, and while Wartlout had looked a little uncertain of Toothless he had shown no sign of even registering that there was something unusual about Elsa. Besides, if he really was lost in this weather, Hiccup suspected that he would be glad to see anyone at all.

But it was one thing to have criticisms, and would be another to voice them in front of anyone else. Instead he manoeuvred so that he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Astrid and tried to sound collected as he spoke.

“How were the dragons yesterday?”

“Toothless didn't want to eat much,” she said. “But the others tucked in. We fed them in the centre of the arena, rather than tipping it in through the hatches.”

“Thank you,” he said, on whose behalf he was not quite certain. But all of the dragons from the arena had lived in pens for more than long enough. He would rather them never need to be behind a locked door again.

Astrid's glance across suggested that she might have had some idea of the direction of his thought. “Piglegs and Froglegs were glad to see the hatchlings, too. And I'm pretty sure that the hatchlings recognised them.”

“That should probably go in the book,” he said, half-automatically. Fishlegs had been keeping almost frantic notes over the last moons as the hatchlings grew, although Hiccup had cautioned him against trying to generalise too much just from the two of them.

At some point, they would need to sex the hatchlings, as well. That was probably going to turn into a lesson in its own right.

They continued along the path, and it was not until they reached the exposed stretch that led up to the academy that the wind really began to bite. Hiccup could not quite hear what Astrid was muttering, but he would not have blamed her if it had included curses. He had to bow his head against the cold, breathing through his mouth as his nose began to sting, and watch his footing as they made their way up to the door.

“Where is my _dragon_?” Snotlout bellowed from inside.

“What?” said Hiccup. He exchanged a glance with Astrid, then she broke into a run; he did his best to jog after her, but his left leg felt strange beneath him and it was all that he could do to move faster than a walk. As he reached the academy, he outright slid down the slope at the entrance, grabbing the wall to stop himself from falling over completely.

Snotlout had grabbed Fishlegs by the vest, pulling him down so that they were face-to-face. As Hiccup arrived, Astrid forced herself between them, shoving Snotlout back again. Hookfang's pen stood wide open, and for a moment Hiccup felt a double lurch in his chest, until movement above him made him look up.

Toothless uncurled himself from the roof and dropped down almost soundlessly, walking up and rubbing his head against Hiccup with a rumble.

“Hey there, buddy,” said Hiccup, automatically cupping Toothless's face in his hands then reaching to scratch beneath his chin. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Look, give me a moment.”

Of course, if Toothless understood anything, it was the tone of voice as Hiccup stepped away again and looked back to Snotlout. The younger boy was breathing hard and turning round and round on the spot, looking frantically around. “Hookfang?” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth. It was loud enough and close enough to make Hiccup wince. “Hookfang, where are you?”

“Snotlout, what is going on?” He finally managed to get a word in edgeways as Fishlegs backed away nervously. “Where's Hookfang?”

“If I _knew_ , do you think I'd be standing here _calling_ for him?” shouted Snotlout.

To be fair, he had a point. Hiccup held up one hand and gestured for Snotlout to lower his voice, but Snotlout simply stormed past towards the entrance again.

“Hookfang!”

“I didn't do anything,” protested Fishlegs, before Hiccup could even ask him anything. “I just came up here to get Meatlug to help, but Hookfang's door was already open and he was gone.”

“It's all right, it's all right,” said Hiccup quickly. “I know that you didn't do anything. And I'm afraid to say that finding Wartlout is more important than finding Hookfang right now.”

There was a pause. Fishlegs and Astrid glanced at each other, and Hiccup's head was hurting too much to do anything more than grit his teeth as he looked at them.

“What is it?”

“Those new levers you put in over the summer,” said Fishlegs. “They made it easier to open the doors, didn't they?”

“Yes,” he said. “But that doesn't mean that Hookfang could have opened it from the inside. They–”

“Not Hookfang,” said Astrid. “Wartlout. Could he have opened it?”

An average nine year old Viking? “Yes,” said Hiccup, “if he wanted to. Did Snotlout...” Before he even finished the question, he mentally slapped himself for bothering to direct it to them. Turning towards Snotlout, he cupped one hand around his mouth and put as much volume as he could behind it. “Snotlout! Get back in here!”

It actually concerned him how quickly Snotlout ran back down to the centre of the arena, feet skidding on the ice. “What?”

“Did you bring Wartlout up here yesterday? Show him the dragons?”

“Well, yeah,” said Snotlout, almost scoffing. “I had to show him Hookfang.”

The dragons had become so rapidly friendly, even to people other than their riders. Hiccup clenched his fist in his hair, taking a deep breath. If the introduction had gone well, then there was every possibility that Hookfang would allow the boy to climb onto his back. But after that, Hiccup could not guess what could have happened. “All right,” he said. “We need to get into the air. Where are the twins?”

“They should be on their way,” said Fishlegs. “Your father was going to get them.”

And they were going to be one dragon shy of their full strength. “When my Dad gets here, we need to make _doubly sure_ that no dragon gets shot down.” As his hand came down, it brushed over Toothless's forehead. They could do this. “Come on, bud. Let's get your saddle.”

Another early morning, another dragon-related problem. Toothless's saddle was in the pen as well, tucked up against the wall in the shadow. Hiccup went to pick it up, but as he stepped towards it his feet went out from under him and he hit the ground shoulder-first.

“Thor!” he snapped. Rolling over, Hiccup went to wipe whatever it was – saliva? Had Hookfang been drooling in his sleep? – off his side, only to have his hand come away stained red. “What the...”

He pressed his hand to his arm again; it ached dully from hitting the ground, but there was no sharp stab of pain from a cut, no rip in his sleeve.

It was Fishlegs who reached him first, taking careful hold of him under the arms. Hiccup could not help a stab of annoyance at how much of today he seemed to spend not able to stay on his own feet.

“Hiccup! Are you hurt?” Astrid ran over as well and grabbed at his sleeve.

“I don't think so,” he said, frowning at his own arm. He looked down at rocky floor, blinking at the dark wet smear across the floor and feeling a slow sick twist in the pit of his stomach. It was tacky and cold on his fingers. “I don't...”

“Hiccup!” Snotlout came running back down into the arena again. He had gone pale beneath the windburn on his cheeks, his hair askew and eyes wild. “Your father is here!”

“Oh, no,” said Hiccup. This was not good timing. He snatched up Toothless's saddle and clutched it to his chest, but it did not properly hide the smear of blood all down his right side. Snow was already starting to stick to it, freezing in place.

As Stoick marched down the slope, flanked by Gobber and Burplout, Hiccup could not help for one desperate moment wondering whether he could hide behind one of the others. But there was no time before Stoick spotted the bloodstains and burst into a run in turn.

He caught hold of Hiccup by the shoulders, looking at him with wide, worried eyes. “Hiccup? What happened? Are you all right!”

“I'm fine!” he said, for what felt like the hundredth time. “It... it's not mine.”

Burplout's face was ashen. “Stoick, you don't think–” his words were choked off.

“No,” said Hiccup, before his father could breathe a word. “It's not Wartlout. It can't be. Look, Dad, Ho- the Monstrous Nightmare is missing. I think someone injured him, scared him off. This is probably his blood.”

Stoick drew his hand away from Hiccup's shoulder and rubbed the blood between his fingers, frowning. There was something reluctant about the way that he shook his head. “No, son. Dragon blood is thinner than this. And it smells different.”

“Flammable,” said Gobber. “The gas gets into their blood.”

Weakness seemed to rush through Hiccup, clutching at his throat and making his knees shake until he managed to get a grip on himself enough to choke a reply. “No. It's not what you think.”

In a flash, Burplout was in his face, grabbing him by the arms and shaking him. Hiccup felt like a ragdoll, and as used as he was to being manhandled there was still something threatening about this, something that made him almost afraid.

“What have you done to my son?” Burplout bellowed. “Where is he? You and your dragons! You said that they were safe! You said that–”

There were tears in his eyes as Stoick pulled him off again. “Burplout, back down. We've no proof anything happened here.”

Burplout shook him off and stormed further into the pen. “That thing, that...”

He moved like a sleepwalker to the back of the cave, where there were vague lumps in the shadows, and dropped to his knees. A sob broke through him. Hiccup's heart was in his mouth as he edged around the pool of blood to see what Burplout was clutching at.

A child's boot, torn, bloody.

For a moment, Hiccup thought he would be sick. Thoughts tumbled in his head; _could_ Hookfang have hurt Wartlout? If Wartlout had scared Hookfang, bought eel or a weapon, or gods forbid struck him... Monstrous Nightmares were not smart. They were strong and fast, true, but none too smart and none too easy to get to do new things. Hookfang had taken food to Dragon Island for years, for fear of the Red Death, and Hiccup knew how easy it was to do something in an instant and regret it and–

 _No._ “Dad,” he said, turning to his father and willing his voice not to shake. “This is not what it looks like. Hookfang would not hurt anyone.”

“Hiccup, I think you should get out of the arena,” said Stoick. He was frowning deeply, his eyes gone cold and set in the way that only the _chief_ ever had to be. His voice was too level.

“Dad, please–”

“I said get out,” Stoick said, more loudly, and Hiccup shied back a step. He bumped into Toothless, who crooned and rubbed his cheek against Hiccup's thigh, nudging the saddle with his nose. “And leave the Night Fury behind.”

Hiccup found himself shaking as he backed away, and jumped when a hand wrapped around his arm. He spun, ready to shout, and felt foolish when he realised that it was only Astrid, with her expression as stricken as he had ever seen it. “Come on,” she said, so softly that he was not sure he heard it at all.

She prised the saddle from his hands and dropped it to the ground, then steered him away. When Toothless tried to follow, it was Gobber who stepped into his way and glared at him, and Hiccup had to look away before Toothless's beseeching look became too much.

Fishlegs followed them out of the arena, to stand in the thick snow just outside. The blood had soaked right through to Hiccup's skin, and was drying in his hair, but he wasn't sure that his shivering was just to do with the cold.

“You don't really think...” said Fishlegs dubiously.

“No,” snapped Astrid. She kept hold of Hiccup's arm, her grip tighter than was necessary, but he did not want her to let go. “There's no way one of the dragons would do that.”

“Like they wouldn't kill a sheep,” said Hiccup.

“Or start fires,” said Astrid.

Fishlegs looked from one of them to the other and back again. “All right, I think that I've missed something here.”

“Someone's been doing things and blaming it on the dragons,” said Hiccup. He felt as if someone had put a stone in his belly, but his head was becoming clearer, sharp with anger. “Trying to get rid of them. And now they've bought my cousin into it.”

Family was _family_. All right, so there was Snotlout, but that was a separate issue. Hiccup would gladly have come to Spitelout's aid if there was actually something he could have done for the man, or Adelaide's. There just never had been anything before.

“Whatever's happened to Wartlout,” he said, over another twist in his gut. “I'm going to find him. And whoever did this, I'm going to make them pay.”

“All right,” said Fishlegs, drawing out the words and taking a careful step away from Hiccup. “Maybe you should take some deep breaths.”

He felt all taut and sharp, the world becoming crisp around him. Someone was doing this, was trying to pin crimes on the dragons, and now they had taken his cousin, a child, someone who until two days ago had probably never come within fifty feet of a dragon in his life. Hiccup couldn't bring himself to think that Wartlout was dead. Chicken's blood, sheep's blood... it was easy to create a bloodstain. Easy to remove a boot and slash it. And they had seen that Hookfang, for all his size and power, was a flighty creature at best.

Even the deep breaths did nothing to cut into his anger. He was about to walk back in and take Toothless out when he heard the door to the arena slam shut again. Heart jumping into his mouth, Hiccup spun around, to see Stoick approaching with clenched fists and stiff shoulders, and Gobber leading Burplout out behind.

“Enough,” said Stoick, before Hiccup could even open his mouth. “The dragons are too dangerous. They're leaving the island, today.”

“What?” said Astrid. Fishlegs gasped.

“Dad, no, listen to me–”

“I said _enough_ , Hiccup!” For the first time, it was something of a bark, and Hiccup had to steel himself against the desire to draw away as he would once have done. “These dragons will go. When the Monstrous Nightmare is seen, it will be shot down. _Do not question me_.”

The words were like physical blows. Hiccup closed his eyes and listened to them go, because he knew that if he had started walking first he would not be able to keep ahead of them. Only once they were well ahead did he start moving again, in dangerous silence.

“You've got that look on your face,” said Astrid, as they started to near the village. “You're planning something.”

“I'm going to pay Mildew a visit,” said Hiccup. He contemplated for a moment whether he should suggest to Astrid that she get her axe, but he was not sure that he wanted to get her involved with this. Or even what _this_ was about to be.

“You don't think...” she trailed off, perhaps not quite able to say the words.

Hiccup wasn't sure that he even wanted to _think_ them.  “I don't know what I think,” he said, knowing it was only half untrue. “But he was there to talk about Stormfly, and he was there to talk about the eels. And if he's been stirring things up today...”

“Surely it would be too early for him to say anything like that?” said Fishlegs.

“This is Mildew we're talking about,” replied Astrid.

“You guys stay in the village,” said Hiccup. “My father will still put out search parties, I'm sure of it. He just won't be using the dragons. Go with them, help them.”

Astrid gave him a very piercing look. “Are you giving us an _alibi_?”

“I really hope not,” he said in all honesty. Taking a deep breath, he took the first steps off the path to take the shortcut up to where Mildew lived. “And let Elsa know that I'm all right.”

Before he got too far away, he heard Fishlegs ask whether they should be following, and just about caught Astrid's grim response that they probably wouldn't be allowed anyway. They were absolutely right on that one. There were some things, Hiccup rather felt, that he needed to do alone.

 

 

 

 

 

How far Mildew lived from the village said a lot by itself. Being part of Berk was all about security, bout having people around, but it also spoke about how much people trusted you and how much they would be willing to defend you in an attack from dragons. Or wildlings, although even the wildling raiding parties seemed to have realised that Mildew didn't actually have anything worth stealing.

Years ago, he was supposed to have been a good fighter, and Hiccup turned the thought of that over and over in his head as he made his way up the path to Mildew's isolated little farm. Pretty much everyone on Berk had killed dragons, and plenty of them had kept something from it – the head of the first dragon they killed, or a claw or tooth. Something to remind you that you could defeat what had seemed like an inexhaustible enemy. Hiccup had grown up with it. He _understood_. He knew that even his father had a knife whose hilt was made of Monstrous Nightmare horn. But Mildew liked to boast about the dragon heads and hides that he had collected over the years, and that was something just fundamentally wrong.

The snow was already growing deeper as he crunched through it, along the barely-trodden path which Mildew himself had to beat clear every summer. Even though it was closer to Berk than the arena, more than close enough to hear the blasts of the great horn that they used to signal to people, it felt more isolated.

Or perhaps that was just because Hiccup knew he was about to do something stupid.

He rounded the last corner, and Mildew's house came into place, a ramshackle old thing that should have been fixed and worked on years ago. But Mildew had no children, no living siblings on Berk, and none of his more distant family had apparently wanted to claim him. The rear half of the house had been converted to hold his sheep, and a rough fence marked out cultivated land dotted with weeds and some late cabbage.

Before his courage could run out, Hiccup crossed to the door and rapped on it so smartly that his knuckles stung. It earnt him nothing but silence. Feeling slightly offended, he knocked again, this time with the heel of his hand and hard enough to slam the door in its frame. “Mildew!” he shouted, the sound feeling too loud. “Mildew! Open up!”

Nothing. Hiccup glanced around, then caught himself and wondered who he had actually thought was going to be watching. As sternly as he could manage, he pushed open the door to the house, still half-expecting Mildew to be waiting inside.

He was not there. The fire had gone cold, and even the sheep in their room behind could do nothing to take the chill out of the place. Strings of dragon claws hung from the ceiling, and pride of place on the wall were three Gronckle heads, two Nadders, and a Monstrous Nightmare skull with a great sword slash through its upper jaw.

Even before, the sight of so much death would have made him feel uncomfortable. Now Hiccup felt sick to his stomach as he took in the room, the crudely-painted shields on the wall to mark Mildew's three dead wives, the ragged blanket on the old chair, the scarred table beside the fire.

A large bucket sat on the table, dark smears around its base. Propping the door open with the chair, Hiccup waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom as he made his way over and looked inside the bucket. The smears were red-brown, and smelt like copper.

Bleeding animals was nothing unusual in Berk. A good blood sausage was just using all of the resources that they had available. But it made Hiccup's stomach twist all the same. He limped over to the pantry and opened the door, but could not see inside.

“Wartlout?” he said uncertainly.

He almost held his breath waiting for an answer, but there was nothing but his own heartbeat in his ears and the sound of his metal foot as he shifted his weight. And, of course, the shuffling and faint bleating of the sheep at the rear of the house.

The inside door had been nailed shut, even if the wooden dividing wall was not enough to hold back either the warmth or the smell of the sheep beyond. Hiccup pushed the chair roughly back to where it had been and closed the door behind him on the way out.

He did not want to believe that he was thinking where he would hide someone if he kidnapped them, but somehow that was what it had come to. Hiding someone with sheep seemed like a better option than some.

Hiccup's head was starting to ache again. He wanted his cousin back, safe and sound. He wanted whoever was trying to hurt the dragons to answer for what they had done. He wanted Toothless by his side again.

He did his best to push all of the thoughts aside as he made his way to the back of the building and wrestled with the door to the sheep pen. It had been barred, and though the bar was not particularly heavy it was slick and awkward, and Hiccup almost dropped it on his foot before managing to set it to the side.

“Come on,” he muttered to the door, which grumbled on its hinges. Those could do with fixing, as well, but apparently Mildew could not even get along well enough with Dogsbreath to get them done. Finally, it lurched open, and Hiccup stumbled back with a muttered oath.

There was nothing wrong with sheep. He rather liked sheep, at least because they didn't try to tie him to trees or steal his lunch. But the wave of smell that hit him from the pen was almost physical in nature.

The first of the sheep almost headbutted him in its eagerness to get out. “No no no–” Hiccup tried to block them, but once one of them had the idea it spread like wildfire, and all seven sheep barged past him and out into what could charitably be called the fresh air. “Thank you,” said Hiccup flatly. “Thank you very much.”

He looked back into the sheep pen. Straw and manure had matted together on the ground, and there was a manger of straw and a trough of water along one wall, but it was quite apparent that Wartlout was not being hidden in there.

“Stupid idea,” muttered Hiccup to himself. He left the door to the pen open. It was hard enough herding his friends, let alone actual sheep.

Mildew would complain, no doubt, but it would be put down to children pulling pranks or the sheep getting particularly wily. Feeling far more tired than he had any right to, Hiccup was about to head home when he noticed a smear of red across the throat of one of the sheep.

He approached it carefully, staying to the side where he could be seen, but it seemed far more concerned with a patch of grass which was still poking through the snow. It did not even react as Hiccup knelt down next to it and reached out to touch the wound.

Wound was definitely the right word. A small, neat cut had been made across the vein in the neck, the wool around it clipped away. It looked to have been cauterised, and the sludgy green remains of something that might have been a healing paste were just visible over the top. The very edge of the wound had pulled open again, to dribble blood into the wool before scabbing over. Frowning, Hiccup straightened up again and looked more carefully at the other sheep. Another of them had the same cut to its neck, closed up and tended in the same way.

Just because the blood wasn't a dragon's didn't mean that it was _human_.

Heart pounding in his chest, Hiccup hurried back towards the village. If the dragons could not defend themselves, someone would have to speak out for them. And it looked as if, somehow, that someone had become him.

****

 

 

 

 

He heard the village before he saw it. Not that this was particularly uncommon, especially in snow or fog where visibility could quickly take a turn for the dismal, but this time Hiccup felt a stab of worry as he heard _shouting_ filling the air.

Someone reached out for him as he walked past his house, but this time he saw the hand out of the corner of his eye and ducked beyond its reached. He turned to see Elsa, pain flickering across her eyes, and winced. “Sorry,” he said, softly. “What is it?”

“Perhaps you should not go down there,” said Elsa. Snow had settled on her hair and across her shoulders. “It is bad.”

She was pressing her hands to her chest, her breathing shallow, and she kept glancing over Hiccup's shoulder to the town behind. It took effort not to turn and look over his shoulder. “I can hear,” he said.

“They want to kill the dragons,” said Elsa. “Mildew, some of the others. Your father is trying to stop them.”

“Where are Astrid and the others?”

“They went to the Arena. Except Astrid, she is with her father.”

He could picture it all too clearly. People had spent years killing dragons, were _used_ to killing dragons, had their weapons still ready and sharpened from years of having to fight. They would come to hand so easily. “Why is Mildew still in the main town?”

“The Terrible Terror,” said Elsa.

Thor and Odin. The Terror had still been in the Hoffersons' house, its size and tendency to stay indoors meaning that most people would probably have forgotten about it until Mildew bought it up again. It couldn't even fly any more. “All right,” he said. “Elsa, come with me. We need to go down into the village and head Mildew off there.”

He had not even finished speaking before Elsa was shaking her head, backing away. “No,” she replied. “It is not safe.”

“This isn't going to be a fight, Elsa. I'm just going to talk to them.”

A small, desperate laugh escaped her, so quickly that he almost did not catch it. “I have seen anger like this before. If they see me...”

The Silver Priests who had cast her from her home, and then the Wildlings who had refused her in turn. Hiccup swallowed, and held out his hand. “I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”

But Elsa looked away from him, turning her eyes to the ground. “Not just for me. I must stay away.”

Too many things were happening at once, all over again. This twisted game that Mildew was playing to try to get rid of the dragons – a game that was using people as its pawns – and now Elsa's fear rising to the surface once again. Hiccup put his hand to Elsa's upper arm, staying firm even as she flinched. “I'll be back to you. Stay here, if this is where you feel safe. I'm going to see what's happening.”

Finally, she nodded, but did not say a word as Hiccup backed away as far as he dared without falling over. Then, grimly, he turned and continued down. He heard the door to the house open and shut behind him, and just hoped that she had something besides her fear to occupy herself.

He could understand. The people had – tentatively – accepted both dragons and a Wildling at the same time. If they turned against the dragons, what was to say that they would not turn against her as well? Especially if they were thinking of a _Wildling_ , and not of Elsa.

Mildew had perhaps two dozen people at his back, gathered around the Hoffersons' house. Stoick stood a few yards in front of it, while Carr and Astrid were both at the door, Carr with one restraining hand on his daughter's arm and her axe in the other. Astrid looked to be in the midst of some blistering tirade as Hiccup made his way down the hill, to judge by her expression, even if he could not make out what she was saying over the general noise.

He could not accuse Mildew outright. That was not how things worked, and he would look biased and more besides. Everyone knew how he felt about the dragons.

“One of those beasts has _killed_ ,” declared Mildew, to shouts of agreement from those behind him. Though he addressed them, his eyes were on Stoick, hard with challenge. “And you let them remain here?”

“They will be taken off the island,” said Stoick, “as soon as a boat can be prepared to bring Hiccup and the others back again. There's no need to kill them.”

“No need?” shouted Azora, pushing forwards. She had a sword already drawn in her hand, with no sheath for it about her. “How can you say that, after what they've done?”

Stoick took a deep breath. “The _Monstrous Nightmare_ will be shot down if it is seen again. With the others, you have no quarrel. Put down your weapons, and don't risk your own skins.”

“And here he is,” said Mildew, pointing with his stick as Hiccup came closer. “Tell me, how does it feel to know that your precious dragons have killed a boy?”

“We don't know that Wartlout has been killed,” said Hiccup. To judge by the quiet of the village, the lack of an audience that a scene such as this would usually have drawn, there were still search parties out. “Perhaps he was injured. Perhaps the blood _isn't even his_.”

There was immediate uproar from the mob, but it was Mildew that Hiccup watched, waiting for a response, any flicker that might mean guilt. He thought that he saw a hesitation, but he could not be sure before the man replied.

“How _convenient_ that we can't prove it. What would be proof enough for you? His charred bones?”

Astrid tried to wrench out of her father's grip, but he must have had a firmer hold than Hiccup had given him credit for. “If you're so worried,” she snapped, “why don't you help the search teams?”

“Oh, I'm helping,” said Mildew. “By making sure there are no more of those beasts. Starting with the one in your house. Bring it out!”

“Aye,” called Mudbreath, “hand it over!”

“Come and get him,” Astrid said, trying to lunge forwards again. Her father's knuckles were turning white where he was holding her back.

Hiccup stepped in front of her and turned to face the angry group, speaking as levelly as he could. “Killing the dragons does _nothing_. If – if something has happened to Wartlout – and _I am not saying that it has_ ,” he added sharply, before Mildew could butt in, “then it will do no help. If they try to defend themselves, you could get injured. Let us take them back to Dragon Island.”

The words tasted foul on his tongue, but he forced them out anyway. Astrid was looking at him in disbelief, but Stoick looked approving, and he wasn't sure which one of them made him feel more ashamed of himself. Mildew scowled, but Hiccup met his gaze, daring him to speak.

“There,” said Stoick finally. “You'll have your peace, and the dragons will be gone. Now if any of you would care to make yourselves useful and join the search parties, it would be a better use of all our time. Go!” he barked, and perhaps half of the group slunk away, some muttering to themselves but none of them daring to say anything allowed.

Of course, Mildew stayed, grinding the butt of his spear against the ground. “And what of your boy? What responsibility will he take for this?”

Hiccup opened his mouth to protest, but Stoick got there first, throwing up a hand to stop Hiccup advancing. “Hiccup and I will speak, Mildew, and that is no concern of yours. At least his actions were meant selflessly.”

There was a warning tone in Stoick's voice, and at those words at least Mildew shuffled back slightly. “Fine,” he said, and spat on the ground between them. “Do what you will. But if those dragons come back, you'd best know they'll be killed.”

He turned on his heel and walked away, his followers parting for him to go. For a moment it seemed that Azora would say something more, but Mudbreath caught her by the arm and pulled her away as well. Then they were left in the quiet and the still-falling snow.

“Carr, bring out the dragon. We'll find a cage to take it back with us on the boat. Astrid, go to the arena with the others and prepare your dragons to fly to Dragon Island.”

“We're going with them,” said Astrid. Her father finally released her and she pulled away, rubbing her arm but keeping her anger for Stoick. “We're not just sending them away.”

“Astrid,” Carr started, but Stoick silenced him with a glance and took a deep breath before talking more gently to Astrid. Not enough to patronise her, just without the anger sharpening his words.

“Right now, with what looks to have happened, those dragons are not safe in Berk. People will try to kill them, and could get themselves hurt in the process. If you can show there is another explanation,” he said, with a meaningful look in Hiccup's direction, “then they might be able to return. But I am sure that you would rather see them safe away from here than in danger in their pens.”

He waited for an answer. Astrid did not seem to have one, her lips pressed tightly together and her whole body wound tight.

Stoick sighed. “Go,” he said.

Astrid looked to Hiccup, who nodded. Still without a word, she took her axe from her father and started jogging towards the arena, not even bothering to get a cloak to cover herself from the snow. Somehow, Hiccup could imagine the burn of her anger.

Both Stoick and Carr watched her go as well. “I'm sorry about this,” said Stoick. “But it's the only thing I can do right now. Get the Terror; we'll take it on up.”

“Yes, Stoick,” said Carr, slipping back into the house and letting the door swing closed behind him.

“Brynnhild is with Pinebolt,” Stoick said, breaking the uneasy silence. “They're sisters by law, and... well, she knows what it is to lose a child.”

Hiccup remembered, faintly. Snotlout had been excited to have a younger brother, who was obviously going to be much better than just a _cousin_ , but the child had died in the hard winter that had followed. He and Snotlout had been about five then. Another pinch of fear ran through him, wondering if Hookfang could really have done such a thing, if he had been wrong after all.

He held it down. The last two moons had proved him right; Toothless had proved him right. “I really don't think that the Monstrous Nightmare killed Wartlout, Dad.”

“I know,” said Stoick, but the words were vague. He rubbed his forehead, voice heavy. “But this is all I can do, Hiccup. It might not be the _best_ thing, but it is the _necessary_ thing.”

“Chiefing,” said Hiccup grimly, recognising the tone. There was just enough time for Stoick to nod before the door opened again and Carr reappeared, Terror tucked under his arm. It was blinking sleepily, and yawned as he handed it over to Stoick.

When Hiccup had been handling it, it had seemed small enough. In Stoick's arms, it looked ridiculous, only the size of a large hare and with its wings slit and partially withered besides. It sniffed his beard, then sneezed.

“Thank you,” said Stoick. “You're joining the searchers?”

Carr nodded. “Gobber said that he and some of the others were checking out a sinkhole nearby. I'll be heading with them.”

That was family as well, in a way; when things were at their worst, the whole tribe became your family, turned out to help you. It was how they had rebuilt the Great Hall the time that a Whispering Death had been among the night attacks, how they had found lost sheep or lost children in the past. Now it was just Wartlout's turn.

“Come on,” said Stoick to Hiccup, nodding to the path to the arena again.

It would go back to being _the arena_ , he supposed. Even if they took apart the roof for metal for use elsewhere, pulled apart the doors, stopped using it, it would still be the arena in peoples' minds. For those few short days, it had really felt like things could change, but now Hiccup was just afraid that the world was too determined to stay the same.

Hiccup walked as quickly as he could, but still got the sense that Stoick was slowing his pace. He heard people calling in the distance, and occasionally say the flicker of firelight between the trees.

“I know the Night Fury needs you to fly,” said Stoick, “so you'll have to go out with them. There'll be a boat to bring you back, a warship but lightly-crewed. The fastest we have left.”

“If you leave the dragons on Dragon Island, I'm staying with them,” said Hiccup. He had meant it to be a statement, but it came out sounding just a little bit like a threat.

Stoick gave him a pained look. “Don't say things like that, son.”

He seemed to use the word more and more often, lately, but Hiccup was never quite sure what to think of it. Whether he was the chief's son, or just Stoick's. “Toothless can't fly without me,” he echoed, almost defiantly. “And the Terror can't fly at all. It will need someone to feed it. Once... once you find Wartlout, once you prove this wasn't Hookfang, then I can come back.”

“I tried once to make you choose between dragons and humans. I won't do it again.” It had the ring of a promise about it. “But I don't know how long we might be searching, or what we might find.”

“You might not be asking me to choose, but Mildew and the others are,” said Hiccup. He was still too keyed-up and angry to be able to fit new thoughts around the ones turning over and over in his head. “And there has to be something to find. Something that will prove that Hookfang did not do this.”

It was if a dam had broken, when it came to Hookfang's name. He could not stop using it now. The pain of Hookfang's being lost was not as bad as thought of Wartlout being missing or worse, but it was still like another stone dropped into his chest with the others. He did not want to think how Snotlout felt right now.

Stoick put an arm in front of his chest, and it was a matter of stopping voluntarily or being stopped. With the ice only making things more difficult today, Hiccup chose the former.

“Then stay here and help us find it.”

It was not just his father's words that gave him pause, but the thought of Elsa, standing in the shadow of their house and looking frightened that the mob in the village would come for her next. He supposed that was a little like chiefing too. “All right,” he said finally. “But we _can't_ leave them for long. You have to know that.”

Stoick sighed, and adjusted the squirming Terror. “Oh, I know,” he said. “Now come on. Those friends of yours will be getting more worried the longer we leave them there.”

 

 

 

 

 

Even Meatlug could have reached Dragon Island in half the time that it would have taken their fastest boat. The boat was sent out first, with Mulch and Bucket, Fishlegs's aunt, and Snotlout sitting stony-faced at the stern. As the sun came to its zenith, Hiccup grimly told the others to saddle up, and slipped Toothless's tail into place for what he desperately hoped was not the last time.

“Stay together,” he said to the others, but could not bring himself to do the same.

Toothless swept up through the clouds like an arrow from a bow, wheeling above them, the tips of his wings leaving faint trails in the air. It was cold and dry and the air felt thin in his mouth, but nowhere other than this, Hiccup knew, would he ever feel so _free_.

He spread his arms as they banked back and forth, feeling the curl of the wind around his fingertips. Perhaps Toothless felt it as well, because he flew slowly and in great beautiful sweeps, as if he too was savouring these hours.

He would have to go back to Mildew's house again, this time when the old man was in. Confront him. Did he dare challenge him to single combat, if it came to that? An old man and a one-legged boy – the rest of the village would not even know what to think. But Mildew was a coward, Hiccup knew that, and he wondered whether the sight of an axe – perhaps not one held in his hands, but in those of someone else – would be enough.

Only when the peak of Dragon Island came into sight did he wheel back down beneath the clouds again. It was snowing even out here over the sea, though the ice floes had not started developing yet. He had to fly back a way to join up with the others, and though Astrid gave him a long look she did not say anything.

They landed in silence, but Hiccup remained in his saddle even as the others slid to the ground, pressing his hands against Toothless's shoulders.

Astrid turned to the others. “Best get their saddles off.”

“This is so unfair,” said Ruffnut. “Barf and Belch didn't do anything.”

“Yeah,” said Tuffnut. “It's not our fault that Hookfang ate Snotlout's cousin.”

“There's no proof that Hookfang did anything,” Astrid snapped, and even the twins looked surprised at her venom. “Now take the saddles off. I can see the sails.”

Hiccup looked up. Astrid was right; the sails of Mulch's ship were visible not all that far away. It would probably only be half an hour before they landed, less if the winds were good. The fog that had once shrouded these islands was thinning with time, although the effect that made compasses useless remained.

With great reluctance, he unclipped his foot from Toothless's harness and slipped down. He reached for the buckles that held the saddle on, but Toothless pranced back out of the way, holding his head low and with his wings half-unfurled and pointed sharply above him.

“Come on, Toothless,” said Hiccup. “I can't do this.”

Toothless gave him a reproachful look that cut right through him, and Hiccup sighed. “Look, I'll leave your tail on, sort of... pin it open permanently. That has to be better than nothing. But I'll be back, I swear.”

He reached out one hand, fingers outstretched, and Toothless hesitated for just a moment before coming and rubbing his head against Hiccup's palm. His scales were not _soft_ , that was not quite the right word, but the feel of them was familiar and warm against Hiccup's hand. Fingers shaking, Hiccup undid the saddle and removed the connecting rod, then managed to knock a bolt out of one of the saddle's buckles. He shoved the bolt into Toothless's tail to hold it reasonably open, an angle which he hoped would let Toothless fly for at least short distances if he had to.

With a chuffing sound, Toothless turned to rub his cheek against Hiccup's shoulder, and Hiccup wrapped an arm around his neck. Part of him still wanted to stay with the dragons. With Toothless. There would be fishing here, and he could make a fire and find shelter, and it would do for a short while. But his father had been right, and he could do more on Berk.

“I'll be back, bud,” he said again, more quietly. Toothless nudged him with one front leg, as if he was trying to return the embrace. “I promise you. I'll be back.”

He heard Mulch shouting across the waves to them, and slowly withdrew himself from Toothless's hold again. There were tears in his eyes, but no, he was not going to let Mildew of all people make him cry. Taking a deep breath, Hiccup retreated to a large boulder that was broken into a distinctive jagged shape at the top, and tucked Toothless's saddle underneath it out of the snow. The leather and iron would hold for a while, in any case.

He emerged again in time to see the boat drawn up on the shore, Bucket splashing down to help guide her in. Astrid was still standing beside Stormfly, saddle in her arms, and Fishlegs had flung himself onto Meatlug's side.

“Time to go, boys and girls,” said Mulch. The childish terms were not an insult, coming from him.

Astrid hitched the saddle closer to her. It might have been Hiccup's imagination that she looked slightly red-eyed as well. “Should we all leave our saddles here?”

“No,” said Hiccup, “don't bother. Only Toothless needs his, there's no point in the others getting covered in snow. Come on, let's get aboard.”

Before he could cross the beach, Snotlout splashed down into the surf, the Terror's metal cage in one hand. They had found it at the back of the armoury, though they had not used the metal and leather straps designed to stop it from being able to move while it was in there. It was huddled down against the snow, and did not look much happier than Snotlout did about the situation.

“Hey, Snotlout,” Hiccup started, but the younger boy shoved past him and further up the sandy beach. Stumbling on the sand, Hiccup fought to get his balance again, his cane gaining no purchase at all, but he couldn't bring himself to be angry.

He watched as Snotlout stomped up the beach, seaweed trailing from his left boot, and opened the cage to let out the Terror. It refused to budge, and he reached in to scoop it out, saying something about stubborn dragons that was half carried away by the wind.

“Go on,” said Hiccup to the others, pointing to the boat. The twins exchanged a glance before shuffling in that direction, Bucket giving them a boost over the side. Astrid lingered a little longer, and Hiccup sighed. “This is my mess. I need to talk to him.”

“Good luck with that,” said Astrid.

She probably had a point, but Hiccup waited as Snotlout deposited the Terror on a rock and shouted at Stormfly that she had better keep an eye on it, before closing up the cage again and heading back down. His eyes were definitely red, his shoulders hunched, and Hiccup suspected that his scowl was covering up shaking.

“Snotlout,” he said again, more quietly. Snotlout tried to step around him, but Hiccup stepped into the way, putting up one hand and expecting a full collision.

It did not come. Snotlout brushed against Hiccup's hand, but nothing more. “Get out of the way,” he mumbled.

“No,” said Hiccup. When Snotlout tried to push him aside, he slapped the offending arm away, and it shocked him how little strength had been behind the shove at all. “Snotlout, listen to me. We are going to make this right. We are going to show people that Hookfang didn't do anything, and we'll get him back.”

“You don't get it, do you?” Snotlout snapped. “It's over, Hiccup. We don't know what happened, but we know that my cousin is missing and Hookfang... the _Monstrous Nightmare_ ,” he corrected himself, “is gone as well, and there was blood everywhere. It doesn't matter what you think. It matters what everyone else thinks. They're not going to keep the dragons on Berk after this.”

“Then I'll show them that they're wrong,” said Hiccup. “All of us will. And we'll get the dragons back and _keep on_ showing them.”

Snotlout snorted and pushed past him. “This is Berk. And when they next see the Monstrous Nightmare, he's dead.”

His voice wavered at the end. One last time, Hiccup considered staying on Dragon Island, then made himself turn back to the boat with the others.

 

 

 

 

 

The wind was on their side as they made their way back to Berk, though the snow continued apace. Fishlegs's aunt Batlegs took the helm, it such a term could really be used for so small a ship, and once they were off the beach the sails filled out to carry them home.

Snotlout was at the prow this time, staring fixedly ahead of them, his fingers locked around the top of the Terror's empty cage. After he snapped at the twins for trying to talk to him, nobody else dared, and most of the voyage back was spent in chilly near-silence.

Even through his gloves, Hiccup's fingers had gone numb by the time that they were expected to help man the oars to guide the boat in. Fishlegs really could handle an oar well, but Batlegs ordered Hiccup onto the same oar as Astrid, which he suspected was just a nice way of saying that he wasn't exactly going to be of much use on one by himself.

Gobber was there to meet them, and Hiccup had managed no more than a hopeful look when he shook his head. Anger slid back into place in Hiccup's chest.

“Come on,” he said to Astrid. She frowned. “I've got something to do.”

But Gobber's hook looped around Hiccup's upper arm and tugged him up towards the slippery, steep stairs. “We couldn't find that sinkhole you were talking about. Need you to show us where it is.”

He almost asked why they didn't ask Elsa, before remembering that he had not admitted that the sinkhole was where he met Elsa in the first place. There was something about Gobber's brusqueness, though, that made Hiccup feel uneasy, and he waved to Astrid in a manner which he hoped communicated that any plans he had previously had were to be considered cancelled until further notice.

“What is it?” said Hiccup, once he was sure that they were far enough up the steps to not be overheard by the others. The sound of Batlegs ordering them to help tie off and clean up the ship for the night was faint below them.

Gobber was frowning. “Mildew's been going from folk to folk, trying to get them to join him and demand that the dragons be hunted again. Even taking them off the island hasn't done enough. You have to promise that you won't start anything.”

“That _I_ won't start anything?” echoed Hiccup in disbelief. “Have you tried telling _him_ not to start anything?”

“Hiccup,” said Gobber warningly, giving him another push to keep walking. “Making accusations counts as starting something.”

With a growl of frustration, Hiccup turned back to climbing again. “Where is he? I need to make sure I stay out of his way,” he added tartly. Gobber gave him a look which said full well that he didn't believe a word of it.

“Got some of those friends of his up at his farm.”

Which put paid to the idea of going and having a private talk with him that evening, Hiccup supposed. With the end of his cane he smacked a stone off the walkway, sending it spinning into the night and the water below. “What's next? I owe him an apology? _Oh, I'm terribly sorry for accusing you of being as crooked as a drunk's outhouse_ ,” he said, voice going prim and clipped in the way that Arendellens tended to speak Northur if ever they learnt it. “ _It turns out that you're far more of a craven weaselly bastard than that_.”

Gobber gave him a markedly unimpressed look.

“Oh, come _on_! He's stirring up trouble and putting himself at the centre of it.”

“And you,” said Gobber, “are not to antagonise him further.”

“Sadly, some people seem to find my mere existence antagonising,” said Hiccup, but unfortunately could not think of any better response. They trudged on, metal foot and wooden tocking against the planks.

His clothing had long since soaked through, clinging to his skin and probably only kept from freezing by his own body heat. A change would be appreciated. They had snatched some food whilst waiting in the academy, but nobody had managed too much of an appetite for that either. His stomach ached.

He doubted that anyone saw Gobber escort him home, but even if they had it probably would not have been that surprising. Hoark, his leg in a cast but at least not altogether lost, was not expected to be taking part either. Besides, Hiccup knew that he was more known for getting lost than finding anything.

The house was cold and dark, not even embers in the fireplace. He could not remember whether it had been lit first thing in the morning when he had woken up.

“Elsa?”

Even if it had not been particularly bright outside, he had no night vision and was still trying to look through the flashes of colour across his eyes. Hiccup grimaced as he closed the door, and tried to suppress shivers.

“Elsa, are you still in here?”

He heard the swish of the curtain to her room, and sighed in relief. “Hiccup?” said Elsa, voice shaking.

“If not, I want my leg back,” he said, gesturing towards his left foot. He was dripping wet. “I've got to change. I'll be down in a minute.”

His thighs were aching as he climbed the stairs to his room. He must have been clinging to Toothless harder than he realised. With a sigh, Hiccup tossed his cane onto his bed and started stripping off his wet clothes, a process which involved a lot of layers in a Berkian winter.

He jumped at a creak of wood, and turned to see Elsa standing at the top of the stairs looking like she had been caught doing something illicit. Ice spread from her fingers to form a fine spiderweb on the wall, but he wasn't sure whether she had noticed or not.

“Could you, uh, turn around?” he said, making a circling gesture with one hand. Technically, he should probably have sent her downstairs to appease his father, but the house was cold and dark.

As Elsa turned her back and lowered herself to sit on the top stair, Hiccup crossed to the table beside his bed and picked up the flint and steel there. It only took a couple of strikes to light the candle, and he limped over to set it down at Elsa's side. She looked round at it for a moment, then lowered her head again.

Keeping half an eye on Elsa, Hiccup returned to his pile of wet clothes and continued to add to it. He wrapped a towel around his shoulders as he sat down on the bed, moving onto his leggings and socks in turn.

“Have you been here all day?” he said, carefully drying off his stump. Elsa nodded. “Have you eaten?”

“Your father came home after the boat went out,” said Elsa. “We ate. Then he went with the search parties again.”

If his father came home tonight, it would probably be not long before dawn. Some of the search parties would come in with the night, but others would keep going with torches that would be easier for Wartlout to see if he was just lost. Stoick would be one of the last ones searching, whatever happened.

“We should get the fire going,” said Hiccup. It would help, he hoped, to drive some of the cold out of the house. Frowning, he paused for a moment with one hand in his clothes-chest and looked round. “Where did Pinebolt go?”

“She went back to the Jorgensen house,” Elsa replied. Still with her back to Hiccup, she drew her braid round over her shoulder and started to work it loose, tugging her fingers roughly through the strands. “Brynnhild Jorgensen went with her.”

Probably for the best, Hiccup thought. He hoped that they had a good fire going tonight. Sighing, he continued dressing, relieved to be in dry clothes even if they were not exactly warm. Once he had dried off his leg, he put it back on, and levered himself back to his feet with a grimace. He was sure that fourteen wasn't supposed to be the age when you started getting stiff.

Elsa jumped when he stepped up beside her and held out his hand to help her up. Picking up the candle, she refused his help, and stood as close to the wall as she could, as if she did not want to risk getting too close to him. Better not to say anything, perhaps. She kept in step with him as they made their way down the stairs again, the one candle not doing all that much to chase back the darkness.

Normally, they would not allow the fire to go all the way out, except for when they wanted to scrape out the ashes. Hiccup did not need to exchange words with Elsa as they set about cleaning out the fireplace and building up the new fire from scratch, Hiccup leaning in to coax the kindling into flame from the candle, and then both of them slowly adding wood bit by bit.

Heat seeped into Hiccup's hands first, then slowly seemed to work its way up his arms. Elsa's face was hard to read, the firelight reflected in her eyes and her lips pressed together.

“I'm sorry about all of this,” he said finally.

She shook her head. “It is not you.”

“No, but Mildew's never going to apologise for anything,” said Hiccup, trying a larger stick. The fire did not collapse, which was a good start. “And someone ought to apologise to you.”

It earnt him a haunted smile. They sat in silence for a while longer, until finally Elsa spoke in a rush of soft words. “It is like the _Aapillen_. The... Silver Priests.”

Hiccup almost made a quip about loudmouths and bigots, but the way that Elsa's eyes were shining stilled his tongue. He knelt back and let her feed the fire.

“My father fought them. You are fighting Mildew. But they force you to do things the same.” Her grammar cracked slightly, but Hiccup let it pass. “It is all the same. Arendelle, Berk, _Maruloet_...”

She trailed off. Hiccup went to take her hand, but she reached for the wood again; he was not sure whether it was chance or not. “It happened in the Wildlands?” he prompted.

“I was eleven,” she said softly. “My magic grew stronger. I had hidden it until then, but I had nightmares. My magic... I woke up to ice everywhere. It was a small hut. I was sharing with other people, and they were frightened.”

Her voice was distant, trembling a little, and she spoke to the fire rather than Hiccup. All the same, he could not help feeling that it was a good thing for her to talk at all about what had happened over her years.

“They came for me with knives. Most _Marulosen_ do not have magic. People by themselves, they have magic or they are...” Elsa's lips moved silently for a moment as they always did when she was searching for a word. “They attack, or they kill.”

“Criminals,” said Hiccup.

“Criminals. Even in _Maruloet_ , they do not accept magic. It is dangerous. Many are from Arendelle, and they still fear magic, as the _Aapillen_ say.”

He wanted to say that Vikings had accepted dragons, and magic would not be so hard to take, but the last few days gave the lie to that. Something else that he needed to fix.

“I won't let anything happen to you,” he said. Elsa gave him a look of sadness, which made him feel very young again. “I promise. You've done so much for me – and I don't just mean breaking me out of the jail, though that was appreciated,” he added, in hope of a smile that did not come. “I'm not going to let people keep hold of their hatred like this. I'm going to change things. Starting here.”

Two promises in one day. He was going to have to be careful with those. But when he reached out to rest his hand over Elsa's, she let it stay there for a moment, then sat back to let him take over the fire instead.


	11. Chapter 11

There probably weren't too many people in the village who did sleep that night. Hiccup certainly did not, sitting cross-legged in a large chair and working glass again just for something to occupy his hands.  He swapped from the large pieces for the spyglasses down to the smaller blue chips, rounding them off until his fingers ached. Even his gloves were starting to look worn in places now.

Gobber came home in the depths of the night, grim-faced and soaked through, and didn't look at all surprised to see Hiccup still awake. He glanced around the rafters, then caught himself and sat down heavily in front of the fire.

“Nothing?” said Hiccup. Gobber shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Some of the parties are coming in for the evening,” said Gobber. “If that Nightmare is on the island, it's gone into the Wildlands. Runa's leading a party out there tomorrow, she's gone home to snatch a few hours’ sleep.”

He wondered whether Astrid would go with her. Dragons had been a part of most peoples' life, but the Wildlands were something different. If Stoick had known that Hiccup had been exploring their edges in the past, there would have been serious words to be had, and probably a lock put on Hiccup's window as well.

Gobber took off his helmet, and the woollen hat beneath, and ran a hand over his head. “I'm sorry to say it, Hiccup, but it isn't looking good.”

“Do you think that Hookfang did it?” said Hiccup, with a sunken feeling in the middle of his chest. “Do you think he could have done?”

“Nightmares are big beasts, Hiccup,” said Gobber, and the tone of his voice made it all too clear which side of the debate he fell on. “I've seen them carry off sharks to eat.”

“To eat, or to give to the Red Death?” he replied.

With a wave of his hand, Gobber acknowledged it, but apparently could not bring himself to say anything more on the matter. “Where's Elsa?”

Hiccup nodded to the workshop. “Asleep,” he said, though he knew that it was just as likely to be _trying to be_. “Decided to leave me to my _fascinating_ work,” he added, with a wave of the latest blue chip. It was looking more like a bead than it had when he started, at least.

“Small for a spyglass,” said Gobber.

“I've got other plans for it. Had other plans,” he corrected himself, and sighed. “Those might not happen now.”

“Something to do with Snoggletog?” When Hiccup looked up in surprise, Gobber shrugged. “It's about that time of year. Were they going to be for Elsa or for Astrid?”

“Uh, neither, actually,” said Hiccup. Before any more guesses could be thrown his way, he clarified. “I was going to trade with Treesprout. She's always the last person in the village to have any fabric.”

“Ah,” said Gobber, nodding. “Snoggletog clothes.”

That was part of Snoggletog as well. Slaughtering season always meant that there was a last minute rush of wool and leather available, and over time that had developed into a tradition of every person having some new item of clothing for the celebration. Usually Hiccup worked something in leather, a belt or gloves or something of that sort, but all of the clothes that Elsa had were still second-hand, and a fair number were Astrid's.

“Not to put a dampener on things,” Gobber continued. “But your attempts to make clothes can leave something to be desired.”

“I was just going to give her the fabric,” said Hiccup. He held up the blue bead, rolling it back and forth in his fingers to see whether it was even. “She might have to handle the dress part.”

“I'm sure she'll manage.”

They lapsed back into uneasy silence, broken by the sound of pumice on glass and the crackling of the fire.

“They've got a map set up in the Great Hall,” said Gobber. “All split up for searching. Your father sent Burplout back to the Jorgensens', and Duskhowl too.”

Hiccup looked up sharply. “Pinebolt's gone into labour?”

“I think it's more that they're worried that she might,” Gobber said with a sigh. It was unthinkable that a man would not be at his wife's side when she gave birth – or, if he was dead or lost at sea, his brother or an eldest son. Someone had to be there, to acknowledge the child as theirs.

Winter was only just starting on Berk, Hiccup knew that. They would have at least four moons of rough weather, the seas basically impassable, and even with the threat of the dragons gone it was still going to be hard work. For as long as he could remember, Hiccup had been aware that winter was a bad time to be born, that being a spring baby had been somehow in his favour, and as he had grown up he had come to better understand just _why_.

“Still, what will happen, will happen. The best we can do is keep looking.”

“Did you find that sinkhole?” It had only occurred to him after Elsa had retired to her room that the reason Gobber had pulled him aside might not have been fabricated. “I mean, I know I'm not great at directions, but...”

“Oh no, we found it,” said Gobber. “Got scratched up on the way in. Signs of an old camp there, as well, and a firepit. You know anything about that?”

Hiccup winced. He had not even thought to check whether Elsa had hidden the signs that she had been there, but he supposed that with her ankle still broken it would have been difficult. Perhaps she had not thought that people would get down there again, or perhaps she had thought it better to put her effort into not being tracked once they were moving through the woods.

“Sorry. That would have been Elsa. It was where she was staying when I... first met her.”

“As long as there isn't someone else hiding out down there,” said Gobber evenly. “I think we've got enough trouble going on around here.”

“Well,” he said, “this is Berk, after all.”

 

 

 

 

 

Despite Gobber's warning that some people would not be too pleased to see Hiccup around, he was not going to let himself be locked inside by some people's anger. “Come on,” he said firmly to Elsa. “I'm not going to let them make me afraid.”

He felt a little guilty about the pain that crossed her face, but he had to believe that it was for the best. Letting Mildew and his small group of followers overwhelm the voices of the rest of Berk who either just did not fear Elsa or were outright welcoming to her... it had to be a form of madness.

Snow was several inches thick on the ground, and had frozen to a crust overnight, but there were already paths cut through the snow where people had been walking during the night. With Elsa close behind him, Hiccup crunched – and occasionally slid – his way to the Hofferson house, already tired but at least getting something of a burst of energy from breakfast and the sight of the sun.

Astrid answered the door, in the middle of bundling up against the cold and with her hair done up tight to her head. “I don't think my mother will let you come with us,” she said immediately.

“Good morning to you too,” replied Hiccup dryly. “By 'us' I take it to mean that you're going to the Wildlands as well?”

Taking down her cloak from beside the door, Astrid swung it over her shoulders and did up the toggle with sharp movements. She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “My mother doesn't want to find Hookfang, she's worried about Wartlout. But if Hookfang is out there, he might need some defending.”

“If you think that you're going to find him, then I should go with you,” Hiccup said.

“We'll be hiking hard,” said Astrid. She nodded to Hiccup's leg. “Are you up to that yet?”

It wasn't a judgement from most people to check, and certainly wasn't from Astrid. More than that, Hiccup had to admit that she had a point. “No, probably not.” For a moment, he considered asking if Elsa wanted to go with them instead, but she had been nervous enough about leaving the house even at his side. “Look, don't get yourself into trouble on his behalf, all right? You still have to come first.”

Astrid actually smiled. “I'm not you, Hiccup.”

“Thank you. Your words fill me with confidence.”

“You know what I mean,” said Astrid, looking right through him. She nodded to Elsa. “Morning. Glad to see there's someone to keep an eye on him today.”

Settling both hands on the top of his cane, Hiccup tried to look casual. “It's not as if I was thinking of digging dragon manure into Mildew's fields.” Astrid sighed. “What?” he said. “It's turning to fertiliser up there in there in the pit already. You've got to wonder whether it would be good for the crops.”

“Well, I suppose _someone_ has to wonder it,” said Astrid. “But as tempting as it is, this is so not the time.”

“I know,” Hiccup said. “It just makes me feel a little bit less like I'm stuck with nothing to do.”

A little more sympathy came into Astrid's expression as she pulled up the hood on her cloak. “I get it. But he's not worth it. Why don't you go take over the smithy while Gobber and Dogsbreath are out?” she jerked her head in a vaguely appropriate direction.

Hiccup took another glance down at his leg. He could stand well enough, and was confident that he could use tools, but he was less than convinced that he could work the bellows. Then again, he supposed that he didn't have to do it all by himself any more. He could always call in a few reinforcements.

 

 

 

 

 

Fishlegs was less than convinced that they should be doing this, but Hiccup airily said that he was still, supposedly, Gobber's apprentice, and that considering Gobber lived in the house anyway it was not really likely that he was going to get into trouble for it.

He was _mostly_ sure that was true.

It actually felt good, in a way. Elsa and Fishlegs helped him to clean the fire and clear an area to work on, and he found some of the Gronckle iron to work with. There was less than he remembered, but more than enough for him.

“What exactly _are_ you planning?” said Fishlegs, standing ready by the bellows.

“When my father came back from the Shivering Shores last year, he was talking about how Garrote Dragonbane was annoyed because he couldn't get hold of a good mirror,” said Hiccup. He went fishing around under the workbenches, looking for the flat shield boss cast which he knew was around there somewhere.

“Dragonbane?” said Elsa.

Hiccup looked over the workbench for a moment. “Not a name to be proud of. But we've managed to keep peace with them for a while,” he sighed, going back to his search, “and a steady supply of gifts tends to help on that front. And now we have access to a very reflective metal. _There_ you are.”

He produced the cast, blowing dust off it, and put it on the benchtop before getting to his feet again. “If a nice shiny mirror doesn't get us in his good books, I'm not sure what will.”

Some years ago, he had met Dragonbane, who had been Chief of the Shivering Shores for a good twenty years now. Hiccup's memories of the man were faint, and had mostly included a black beard heavily streaked with grey and Terrible Terror skulls worn on a belt. Dragonbane was moody, prone to violence, and had a personal vendetta against every dragon that crossed his path.

Hiccup did not quite remember what he had said to anger the Chief, but he had not been taken back since. He could not say that he particularly missed the experience.

“Do you really think that the Gronckle iron would make a good mirror?” said Fishlegs.

“Well, it's more reflective than iron even in its basic state,” he said, shrugging. “I figure if we cast it and polish it, shape the handle properly, we should get something fit to be seen.”

If he stopped thinking about the mirror for too long, he would start thinking about Toothless and the dragons instead. He was not sure that there was anything that he could do until Wartlout was found, or at least he was not capable of thinking of anything right at the moment. Perhaps if he kept his mind on the metal, it would make everything else a little bit clearer. It had worked like that before, at times.

“Come on,” he said to them both. “Let’s cast some light on this.”

 

 

 

 

 

A warning horn blared in the middle of the night.

Hiccup started awake, groping on his nightstand for his leg before his brain even managed to catch up with the rest of him. Two long blasts, a distinct pause, and then two blasts again. But that was impossible.

Abandoning the leg, he grabbed his crutches and hopped out to the top of the stairs, just in time for Stoick to fling open the front door. “Gobber!” he bellowed, fit to make the house shake. “Get to the smithy!”

“Who in Odin's name–” Hiccup started, but Stoick looked straight at him. Behind his beard, his face was pale.

“There are boats alight at the docks. It's Nightmares.”

“What?” said Hiccup. He went to take a step downstairs, momentarily forgetting how many feet he still had and almost sending himself flying as a result. He clutched at the banister, dropping one of his clutches. “That's ridiculous!”

“You stay in here,” said Stoick, so sternly that it was almost vicious. Hiccup heard a door open below him, and Gobber surged into view, still doing up his belt. “Attack on the docks.”

Outside, the horn was still blaring. “It's really dragons?” said Gobber. It was almost vindicating to hear the shock in his voice.

“We can't see them,” said Stoick gruffly, “but it's their fire, all right.” He stepped back into the doorway, pointedly opening the door for Gobber to leave. Before they could get out without any explanation, Hiccup managed to get enough balance to make his way down the stairs, jumping down the last few and catching himself on a chair just as his father went to prop him upright once again. Stoick growled. “Hiccup, I don't have time for this!”

“Time for what, Dad? You really think that after this long of nothing, the dragons are attacking again? Are they even taking food?”

“Hiccup,” said Stoick.

“Why would a dragon set fire to a boat? Even when they _were_ attacking, they weren't just setting fire to ships!”

Stoick grabbed his upper arm and pushed him down into one of the chairs, jarring-hard. “ _Stay here_. I am barring the door, do you understand?”

Just before he left, Gobber stopped and turned back into the room again. Stoick drew himself up, preparing to bellow, but Gobber reappeared almost immediately with a cloth-wrapped bundle in his hands. “Here,” he said, giving it to Hiccup. “Keep hold of those for me.”

Hiccup tried to push back up to his feet again, but his father's hand on his shoulder might as well have been an iron clamp. He had no choice but to take what Gobber offered. “Dad, you cannot seriously–”

But then Gobber and Stoick were both out of the door, and he heard the humiliating thud of the bar falling into place once again. Could he really have achieved so little in the last moons? Gritting his teeth, Hiccup tightened his hands around the bundle now in his lap, then bent down to retrieve the one crutch still within range.

The sound of a curtain behind him reminded him that he had at least one thing to show for a lost half a leg. “Hiccup?” said Elsa softly. “What is it?”

As if on cue, the horn outside sounded yet again. “That,” said Hiccup, with a wave, “is the signal that there is a dragon attack. A sound we have not heard in well over two moons.”

Climbing out of his window was probably going to be out of the question, but that did not mean that he could not be at least dressed and two-legged this evening. Hiccup held out the bundle and without prompting Elsa came to take it from him, hands never touching his. She was still wearing her bracelets; he wondered whether she slept in them. It was going to be hard to get more without a dragon to make the distance shrink.

“If you will give me a moment,” he said, getting to his feet. “It's a bit draughty in this.”

Narrowly resisting the urge to curse stairs and everyone who ever built them, he returned to his room and sat down heavily on his bed. He dragged on his leg, hauled on some layers of clothes, and stomped back downstairs to find Elsa cautiously picking at the edge of the fabric. She looked up sharply, looking guilty.

Hiccup waved it away. “Open it up. Let's see what Gobber thinks is so important.”

With quicker movements, Elsa unwrapped the bundle, and revealed two slender knives. They were a little shorter than was usual for Viking daggers, and slender, with a narrow crossguard. They looked, if he were honest, like Arendellen blades, not even fullered to make them lighter as a Viking sword would be.

Elsa was still looking in amazement as Hiccup stepped forwards and picked up one of the knives. It shone very brightly in the low, banked fire, and felt surprisingly light. Balanced, yes, and the hilt actually fit well in his hand, but so light that he couldn't help wondering whether Gobber expected it to even be able to cut up meat at the dinner table.

Until he saw the way that the light glittered on the blade. It looked very familiar, very much like the mirror which he had spent the day working on. Frowning, Hiccup tested one edge of the knife against the fabric. The rough wool fell apart like butter.

“Gronckle iron?” he said. Elsa looked up at him, surprise on her face. “I... actually think this is Gronckle iron. The same stuff that we were working with today.”

He went to touch his thumb to the edge of the blade, then caught himself before doing something quite so monumentally stupid. And made a mental note never to leave these unattended around the twins. “I never guessed that it would be this useful. Hang on, Gobber's got some old sheaths around here somewhere.”

There were always bits and pieces that migrated from the smithy to the house, and most of the time Stoick simply attempted to relegate them to a large chest that sat in one of the back corners of the room. Searching through it, Hiccup managed to find a couple of sheaths that, though heavily worn and in serious need of replacement leather, would probably do for now. He put one knife on his own belt, and held out the other to Elsa.

“Oh,” she said, shaking her head. “I could not possibly...”

Where she had learnt to be that polite around Berk, Hiccup honestly did not know. Pulling the cloth from her hands, he replaced it with the knife. “Please. I'd feel more comfortable if you had it. Even if it's just to help you cut the plants in the garden.”

Elsa hesitated for a moment, then gave him a wan smile and accepted it, undoing her own belt for a moment and slipping on the knife. In the tattered sheath and with the slender handle, it was really not much to look at, but it did go one step further towards making her look like a viking, and like this really was her home.

The horn sounded outside again, and Hiccup gritted his teeth. “This is ridiculous,” he said aloud. “What, do people think that because we've sent the dragons away, they're attacking us in revenge?”

He was at least mostly sure that such an idea was ludicrous. The peace had been the result of the destruction of the Red Death, surely, not something that the dragons were consciously participating in. And Stoick had said that they had checked the mountain, and that every Red Death hatchling had been killed, the remaining eggs destroyed. There could not be another one to take its place.

“You are pacing,” said Elsa.

Hiccup looked down at his feet in surprise, as if they had been to blame for the fact that he had, indeed, been pacing up and down the room. “Yeah, my Dad always says that I couldn't sit still.”

He did not want to now, either, and kept to his pacing, though he took a bit more care that he was not limping.

“Could this be Mildew as well?” Hiccup spun to face Elsa, whose expression was hard to read, but probably vaguely confused, as she stared back. “I'm sure that the sheep was him, and I'd wager that the eel was as well. He used to be a dragon hunter back in his day...”

Monstrous Nightmare fire, his father had said. Each dragon had a different flame – they looked, smelt, burnt differently, and Hiccup knew full well that it was possible to tell them apart. Any Viking would know the clinging effect of Nightmare fire.

But could you get the fire without the dragon? Hiccup found himself pacing again, thoughts marching to the beat of his foot against the floor. Nightmares were constantly producing new saliva to coat themselves with, and he had heard Snotlout complaining before about Hookfang dribbling in his sleep. It might be possible to collect it from a dragon's skin, or even its mouth...

If you were friendly with it. Hiccup reached up and rubbed his forehead. The only way that you could get Monstrous Nightmare saliva would be to have it trust you, or to have it chained down. Neither of which Mildew was exactly going to be able to manage, even with his little gang. No matter how good a dragon-slayer he had been in his day, now he was an old man with little strength left, and every year it had been Stoick who had led the hunt to capture the new Monstrous Nightmare.

He didn't want it to be a dragon. But there was no-one on the island who would be able to pull this off.

“Perhaps it is only one dragon,” said Elsa quietly. Hiccup looked around, startled out of his thoughts. “They say it is a Monstrous Nightmare. There are some humans who are... alone. Perhaps this dragon is as well.”

“One rogue dragon, taking on Berk,” said Hiccup, trying out the idea. Perhaps that was a better fit, but he still disliked it. “I suppose you get humans like that.”

It seemed that the horn had fallen silent, but that could just mean that enough people were out and about that they did not need to summon any more. It was not exactly possible to sleep through it.

“If it is, I need to see,” he said finally. Truth be told, he needed to see whatever was happening. He turned around and eyed the front door. “Do you think that you could get that open with your magic?”

“Hiccup...”

The pain in Elsa's voice was enough to flick a switch, and he caught himself. Elsa's magic was not a tool that she liked to use. “No, wait, hang on,” he started towards the stairs. “I'll give you a boost out of my window, and you can open the door from the outside.”

Considering what Elsa had said about getting into trouble with her little sister, perhaps _this_ was a little bit like having siblings as well.

Elsa still looked wary, but she followed Hiccup up the stairs to his room. “Your father said that you should stay inside.”

“My father would have said worse than that if he knew I was sneaking out to the cove,” he pointed out. “Sometimes, he doesn't actually know best about things.” He smoothed out the covers on his bed and stepped up, reaching out to help her stand beside him. “And when it comes to dragons, I'm finding that keeping an open mind about things helps.”

For a moment, he thought that she was going to say something further, but she just sighed and looked up to the window. She undid the latch and pushed it open, sending snow falling from the edges down onto Hiccup's bed.

“Don't worry about that,” he said quickly. He dropped to his good knee and cupped his hands on top of his left. “Come on, here.”

Elsa was only about his height, but either of them was tall enough to get their hands to the windowsill. She took a deep breath, then put one foot into the stirrup of his hand and pushed upwards, taking her weight onto her arms. Hiccup just about kept his balance. Then her weight was gone, and she was pulling herself to a seated position on the windowsill, with far more dignity than Hiccup had ever managed. For a moment she slid out of sight, then looked back through again, one side of her face warmed by the distant fires. “You are sure?” she said, one last time.

He shrugged, shuffling back down to the floor and brushing as much snow off his bed as he could. “Too late to think otherwise now.”

“One moment,” said Elsa. She closed the window, and he heard scraping on the outside followed by a soft thud.

Finally, something actually heading his way. With a satisfied nod, Hiccup turned and trotted back down the stairs again, grabbing his cloak along the way more against the cold than against any snow. He pulled it on as he reached the front door, leaning his cane against the wall for a moment to tie it up, and waited.

Hiccup frowned. Elsa should have been able to get around the side of the house faster than he could get down, no matter how bad the snow was out there, and the bar wasn't that heavy. Even he could lift it, if need be.

“Elsa?” he called.

No reply. He was just considering how ridiculous it would be to knock on the inside of his own door when there was a short, cut-off sound from outside, like a scream swallowed back before it could be released. Panic caught at him.

“Elsa!” He shoved the door with his shoulder, as impotent a gesture as it was. The door did not budge. He was just about to turn around and head back for his window, leg be damned, when he heard the grating sound of the bar being pulled out and the thud as it was set to the side.

The door swung open, and Hiccup released the breath he had been holding.

“Thank the gods you're–”

Then a hood went over his head, a hand slapped across his mouth, and he did not have a chance to get out even a fraction of a scream.


	12. Chapter 12

Rope was lashed around his hands before he had a chance to react, his legs scooped from the ground and more rope put around his ankles. Hiccup tried to scream, but the hand across his mouth was pinned too tightly, and when he tried to bite down the cloth it was too thick to get through and tasted bad enough to make him gag.

Fabric replaced the hand, forcing itself between his lips and making his stomach churn with the taste of ammonia. Hiccup tried to force out a yell, a scream, anything, but it strangled itself on his tongue and made his head swim.

“Come on,” said a man, on the far side of the hood. He had a rough voice, and though his accent was not Berkian, Hiccup could not quite place it. “Let's get moving.”

With a thud that knocked the air out of him, he was flung over someone's shoulder, and his head started to ache again as he was upside down. All that Hiccup could manage was a muffled, angry sound, and before he could plant a good kick his legs were grabbed in a grip like a vice. When his squirming knocked his head against the person's back, it was against hardened leather, and probably hurt them rather less than it hurt him.

He tried to call out to, or possibly for, Elsa, but it became a formless sound that he could hardly hear anyway, over the pounding of his heart and the sound of running footsteps. Jostling back and forth, he lost track of time, and it seemed to last forever until he was dumped onto rocky ground, pain thudding through his leg and hip.

“Now _that's_ more like it,” someone said. Another man, but a different one than before, gruff-voiced but sounding amused.

Heart pounding, Hiccup squirmed to a seated position and tried to reach round for the knife at his hip. His hands had been tied together too well, though, and even as his fingertips brushed the hilt he felt someone else reach in and snatch it away.

He gave a cry of protest, but it sounded like a puppy's yelp. Not exactly the most intimidating of things.

“And a girl as well,” the man continued. “Now there's something I didn't expect.”

A knife slashed through the hood over Hiccup's head, knicking his forehead on the way past. He felt blood trickling down his skin, but was more concerned with looking around him and getting his bearings back.

They were in a cave, on the eastern side of Berk to judge by the stars that he could see outside. Hiccup had been thrown to the cave floor, and Elsa was beside him, similarly bound and with a sackcloth hood covering her head. A handful of men, and one woman, surrounded them, some with torches in their hands. They were armed and armoured, all heavily-built and most boasting scars on their arms or faces.

In the centre of them, right in front of Hiccup and Elsa, stood the tallest and broadest of the men. He was wearing scalemail, a helmet with layers of horns, and heavily-spiked pauldrons. At least, Hiccup supposed, he had not been thrown over _those_ shoulders. His beard was huge, dark, and matted, not groomed and braided in the Viking way. Hiccup was starting to suspect that he knew which island these intruders were from.

“So,” said the man, now addressing Hiccup directly. “I finally get to see Stoick's little hiccup.  I hope you'll forgive me for not being at your naming ceremony.”

Hiccup sank his teeth into the fabric still pressed into his mouth, and did his best to glare.

“Not feeling too chatty today? Never mind, I'm sure you'll warm up to me.” One of the others handed him the Gronckle iron knife, and he looked it over casually.  “What's this? It'd be an insult to weapons to call it a knife... but I guess that meals don't fight back too hard. Pretty, though. Get the sheath,” he said.

The man who had handed him the knife nodded, and bent down over Hiccup once again. Hiccup gave a muffled shout, trying to writhe away as the man perfunctorily undid his belt and slipped off the sheath. All that it did was tip him sideways into Elsa; this time she did not cry out, but he could feel tension shaking through her, and where her shoulder had been bared it was painfully cold against his arm.

Hands from behind pulled Hiccup upright again as the man doing the talking added the sheath to the other weapons dangling from his belt. He kept the dagger in hand, though, then stepped forwards and grabbed the top of the hood over Elsa's head.

“No!” Hiccup tried to scream, but it turned into formless sound. All the same, the man turned and gave him a dangerous smile.

“Really, boy, what do you think of me?”

Hiccup wouldn't want to dirty his lips by saying it anyway, and just narrowed his eyes. Laughing, the man slit the top of the hood and then pushed it down, revealing the upper half of Elsa's face. Her eyes were wide and staring blue, her cheeks even paler than usual, and her hair was half-loose around her face. There was fear in the gaze that she turned on the man, he could see, but there was more anger around and through it. She held his gaze until he, still laughing, turned away.

“I don't remember seeing any that look like you! I know the boy here, but tell me, what's your name?”

Elsa's eyes had gone cold and hard, and Hiccup could see her breathing heavily behind the gag.

“Of course,” said the man, as if something had slipped his mind, “you can't answer me just yet. Well, we'll see to that.” He turned back to face Hiccup, toying with the Gronckle iron knife. “But first... we're out of shouting range of the village, young Hiccup, so a smart boy like you will know not to waste your breath. Besides, if you get too loud, I'm sure we could find a way to...” he tilted the knife so that the light caught it; “negotiate your silence again. And vice versa. Is that quite clear?”

If things were as Hiccup thought, he didn't have much of a choice. He nodded curtly.

Finally, the band around his mouth was released, and Hiccup gasped for fresh air. After a moment's pause, when he could be sure that his voice would not shake, he finally spoke. “What are you hoping to do by kidnapping me?”

The man gave a sharp bark of laughter. “What, not asking what I'm doing? Who I am? Or perhaps you think you know the answer already.” He leaned in, a glitter in his eye.

“Alvin,” said Hiccup flatly. “Alvin the Treacherous, current leader of the Outcasts.”

“Give the boy a fish!” Alvin rocked back on his heels, grinning and showing uneven, brown-stained teeth. “They did say you was a smart one. So, as I am indeed Alvin the Treacherous, why do you think that I am here?”

Of that, Hiccup was not quite so certain, but he had what he hoped was answer enough. “You want me to answer some questions for you,” he said.

Fun though it doubtless was to gloat, he doubted that Alvin would take away the gag unless there was something in particular he wanted from Hiccup. And it was definitely Hiccup, and not Elsa; they had not even expected her to be there. Whether it was because of his position as son of the chief, or just because he made an easy target, he was not so sure.

“Not bad,” said Alvin. “Though perhaps you haven't yet worked out what those questions might be. You see, we've heard a few stories about your little antics. Savage,” he called over his shoulder.

The man who had taken Hiccup's knife stomped off out of the circle of firelight. There was a thump, a groan, and then Savage reappeared, dragging another man behind him. It took Hiccup a moment to recognise the figure beneath his blood-matted beard, the multicoloured bruises patterning his face.

“Lugstick,” he breathed. He had last seen the man leaving Berk, furious at the choice to allow the dragons to remain alive on the island. That had been over a moon ago and, for Lugstick, apparently several rounds of beating ago as well. He had been stripped to the waist, and bruises old and new all but covered his torso.

Savage hauled Lugstick into the circle, to some laughter and jeering from the other watching Outcasts. One of the men took the opportunity to put in the boot, but Lugstick hardly seemed to notice as he was pulled over and pushed to his knees on the ground.

“Not much of a friend of yours, from what I hear,” said Alvin. “He told us some interesting stories at first. Then we had a few more words with him, and he told us some _very_ interesting stories. Like how you lost that leg of yours, for example.”

He prodded Hiccup's metal foot with one heavy boot.

“It's not Stump Day yet, Alvin,” said Hiccup. “You'll have to wait if you want to hear the story.”

The glitter in Alvin's eyes may or may not have been just a result of the firelight. “Oh, but I've already heard the tale. The Red Death, was it called?”

Hiccup gritted his teeth. He was losing feeling in his fingers where his arms were tied so tightly together, and his shoulders ached.

“I'll take that silence for a yes. So you were there, then. Which means that you will know the one that they call the Dragon Conqueror.”

For a moment, Hiccup just looked at him, wondering whether he was actually still asleep and all of this was a nightmare bought on by some bad yak milk. He didn't actually know all that much about Alvin, just that Stoick grew angrier at the mere mention of the Outcasts, and that _something_ had happened twenty years or so ago which had led to Alvin's banishment. Perhaps it had driven him mad. Or madder.

“Dragon Conqueror?” he said finally. It came out incredulous.

Behind Alvin, Lugstick wheezed blood. His beard and hair had been crudely cut and stuck out in tufts and at angles, and Savage had one hand tightly wound into what remained. Alvin turned just long enough to give a disinterested sneer, then looked back to Hiccup again.

“Yes, boy, the Dragon Conqueror. The one who drove the dragons off Berk. Your friend here told us that you lot found Dragon Island at last, but wouldn't tell us who it was that finally did for the Red Death.”

Dragon Master had been bad enough, but somehow the combination of respect and mockery on Alvin's tongue made Dragon _Conqueror_ all the worse. As if Alvin could not decide whether to respect the man who killed the Red Death, or to laugh at him for a foolish name and foolish arrogance and the base foolishness of living on Berk.

Hiccup pressed his lips together, willing himself to find an answer swiftly and not quite managing to. If he told the truth, he doubted that Alvin would believe him; if he lied, he would just be offering someone else for Alvin's anger.

“There is no Dragon Conqueror,” he said finally.

This time, Alvin's snort was far from amused. He lunged in and grabbed Hiccup by the chin, so hard that Hiccup would have sworn it would leave bruises. The light glinted off Alvin's helmet as he leant close, eyes narrowing dangerously. “They say that you're no fool – so don't play me for one. Maybe you don't call him that around here, but you do know who I'm talking about. So who is it?”

Though Hiccup did not dare look around, he could see in the edges of his vision that Elsa was looking at him. It would be a really good time for him to be able to talk to her, but the few words of the Wildling language which she had taught him would be nowhere near good enough.

Hiccup took a deep breath. “It was me.”

Alvin gave him an outright disappointed look. “Hiccup, Hiccup, Hiccup, come on now. Let's not be so silly.”

“I drove the dragons away,” said Hiccup. It was close enough to a truth that he could look Alvin in the eye as he said it; it had been his work that that let the peace with dragons come about, and had meant that there had been no attacks these past moons. “You said yourself that I was smart. I bought down the Night Fury.”

Now, Alvin was starting to look interested, the smile gone. He finally released Hiccup's chin, and reached up to rub his beard thoughtfully. Hiccup pressed on.

“I made a machine that could shoot it down.” He almost said _him_ , and caught himself just in time. “Found it when it crashed.”

“And _you_ killed a Night Fury?”

“I kept it alive,” said Hiccup. “And I used it to learn about dragons. That was what told me how to kill the Red Death.”

Lying had never particularly been among his skills, but somehow that seemed to mean that when he was being truthful, people were more likely to believe him. And whatever else he was doing – including pretty desperately guessing what to say – he was telling Alvin the truth.

“Berk has been trying the brute strength method for years,” he added. “Of course we needed a different approach.”

Whatever else Alvin was, it looked as if he was not a fool either. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he did not immediately laugh in Hiccup's face, or even deny his words as people in Berk had done. Though perhaps Lugstick's own testimony had gone some way towards that. Alvin turned to look at the man, whose blacked eyes were swollen almost closed and whose head hung down. It wasn't clear whether he even knew that Hiccup was there.

“Go on,” said Alvin finally.

“I used its size against it,” said Hiccup honestly. “Bought it crashing down. It had some influence over the other dragons, and they haven't attacked us since.”

Savage stepped forwards, leaning in, but Alvin waved him aside. “Then tell me, boy... how do you plan to prove this?”

 _That_ had not been what Hiccup was expecting, and struck him to silence. He was not even sure how he could prove to be the 'Dragon Conqueror' which something seemed to have conjured up in Alvin's mind, let alone how he could do so without risking getting himself killed.

“Hiccup,” said Elsa.

The tie around her mouth had not been cut, but somehow she had worked it low enough to be able to speak. The woman who stood among the Outcasts grabbed Elsa's hair and struck her, back-handed, across the cheek. A red mark rose on Elsa's skin, but she did not cry out.

“Hey!” said Hiccup. He desperately hoped that they did not notice the ice that clung to the woman's gauntlet.

Alvin raised a hand, as if he was restoring order at a meeting that had become a little rowdy. “Now now, Clenchjaw,” he said. “Let her speak.”

The woman lowered her hand again, and Elsa made sure to watch it all the way down before speaking with great care. “Hiccup,” she said again. “ _Aan haamos_.”

“What's she saying?” said Savage.

“What, you don't speak Arendellen?” said Hiccup, as off-hand as he could manage. Savage and Alvin exchanged a glance, and he hoped that he was right. Very few Berkians had even heard Arendellen, and only a handful spoke any – even the men who came to sell ice, some of only a handful of Arendellen people who dared the Wildlands, spoke in Northur instead.

“ _Aan haamos_ ,” Elsa repeated, hissing the 's' through her teeth.

He tried to remember the words she had taught him. _Aan_ was some sort of negative, he was sure, and _haamos_ felt familiar. Sometime in the cove, he was sure...

 _Toothless_.

With as small a movement as he dared, Hiccup nodded, and when Elsa closed her eyes he was sure that she had seen.

“Let's go to Dragon Island, then,” he said airily.

After only a moment's hesitation, Alvin chuckled, but it did not sound too confident. “Now, I'm not so sure that's wise.”

“Well, if you don't think that you can handle it...” Hiccup trailed off, waiting for the insult to sink in. When he saw the slight twitch of muscle in Alvin's temple, he knew that he had him. “I told you, it was me. I know where Dragon Island is, I can guide you there. And then I'll show you.”

“Fine then,” Alvin snarled. “To Dragon Island it. Clenchjaw, keep an eye on her,” he added, with a nod to Elsa. He drew his own knife to cut the rope tying Hiccup's ankles together, and hauled him to his feet. Hiccup wasn't sure whether it was the metal foot or the loss of circulation which made him stumble quite so badly, but he gritted his teeth against it and did his best not to limp. “Oh,” he added, “and get that knife.”

Clenchjaw snatched the Gronckle iron blade from Elsa's belt and shoved it into a ragged sheath on her own belt. She used one of her own blades to cut Elsa's bonds and pulled her upright as well.

“Let's get going,” said Alvin. “There's a boat waiting for you, boy.”

All that Hiccup could do was hope that he knew what he was doing. For once.

 

 

 

 

 

Only when Hiccup asked whether they wanted him to point at the map with his nose did they cut the ties around his hands. He rubbed his wrists until he got all of the feeling back in his fingers, but Alvin laughed when he told them to cut Elsa's hands as well.

“It might only be the two of you,” Alvin said, “but I didn't get where I am by taking chances. Her hands stay tied.”

Elsa caught Hiccup's eye, and he waited for her to nod before he backed down. The original Outcasts had been Berkians, and used exactly the same mapping process; it was not too hard for Hiccup to read their maps. The real difficulty was telling himself that this was all that he could do given the circumstances. He did not much like the thought of Alvin, or any of the others, knowing where Dragon Island was.

He gave curt instructions to Savage, who charted the course and started shouting to the others to man the oars and get them out into the water out of the sight of Berk. The sails, currently furled, were a deep green-grey that would not be easily seen, and they worked by moonlight and with only one lantern hanging by the map.

The Outcasts did have their own insignia, and their own traditional sails, but Hiccup supposed that Alvin had not earnt his name for nothing.

He was seated in the prow, hands tied back together and to the gunwhale, and Elsa was placed beside him with her hands lashed to one of the blocks beside the braces. As they were sitting right beneath the lamp, Hiccup realised that there was a bruise forming on her cheek from Clenchjaw's blow. He gritted his teeth. They would pay for this.

As the ship drew north of the island, Hiccup saw the fire at the western end of the docks. It was the right colour for Monstrous Nightmares, he had to admit, but there was no sign of dragons dipping out of the thick clouds, no more fire coming down.

“So it was you who staged it,” he said, as Alvin walked towards them.

Alvin gave an appreciative nod. “I was wondering when you might figure that out.”

“A couple of boats, further offshore?” said Hiccup, eyeing up the faint line of the horizon. “Soak some rags in Nightmare spit... you'd need the weight for the distance on a catapult, but you could probably do that with wood. Nobody's going to notice another lump of wood. Or you could trust the stones to sink, and the burning to hide any signs of them.”

“Not bad, not bad.”

“But the question is,” said Hiccup, “how you got the Nightmare saliva in the first place.”

Alvin chuckled. “Can't blame me for keeping some secrets, can you?”

He could tell from the tone of voice that he would not be getting an answer, and with a soft sigh Hiccup leant back against the gunwhale. It was cold, and as they got further out to sea there was a shower of hail that stung his cheeks and forehead until he bent over to hide his face from the worst of it.

Rivulets of ice-cold water ran down his cheeks, and his shoulders started to ache from the cramped position. The Outcasts were creepily silent as they sailed, save for a curt word from Alvin or Savage here and there.

Lugstick had not been bought onto the boat with them. Hiccup had not seen what had happened in the cave after he and Elsa had been led out, but Alvin had said that Lugstick had a different boat to take. He had a terrible feeling that he knew what that meant.

Time passed, and despite himself Hiccup might have dozed for a while, hands going numb from the hail and cold water, head down almost against his knees. The sky was actually growing lighter when he dragged his head up again, neck cramping, He looked around sharply, before his eyes settled on Elsa. With her hands still tied behind her, she was watching the Outcasts warily, eyes lingering most often on Alvin or on Clenchjaw.

“How are you doing?” he said, leaning his head from side to side and grimacing at the pangs in his muscles.

Elsa glanced over, then her eyes returned to their captors. “I have been worse,” she said softly.

“Thank you, for what you said.”

“Thank me when it works.”

Her words took him by some surprise. Not just how perfect her grammar was, though he was fairly sure that she had never used that construction in front of him before, but the way that her voice trembled just slightly.

“It will,” said Hiccup fiercely. She gave him one of those smiles which he had learnt meant that she was grateful, but not sure that she could believe him. He decided to refrain from adding that it had to.

“Good morning, Hiccup,” said Alvin, with a sort of dark cheer in his voice that made Hiccup's skin crawl. “Nice to have you back. Your friend here wasn't too chatty.”

Immediately, Hiccup turned to Elsa. “What did he do?”

“He achieved nothing,” she said.

Alvin's eyes could have carved stone. “Like I said,” he said after a moment, looking back to Hiccup. “Not too chatty. I heard you calling her 'Elsa', I believe? Arendellen name, to go with the language. Just trying to make polite conversation, but there you go.” Glancing upwards, he nodded to the skyline. “That's the Island you were talking about, I'm presuming.”

The easily-recognisable skyline of Dragon Island was visible on the horizon. Pressing his lips tightly together, Hiccup nodded, and tried to straighten up where he sat. His toes were going numb, his fingers stiff, and he tried to flex back some life into them as Alvin started ordering his men to turn the boat towards Dragon Island.

 

 

 

 

 

It was drizzling as the boat crunched up onto the shore. Alvin and the others had lapsed into silence again, but it was a different silence: cautious, and armed. Some of the men were carrying crossbows, and Hiccup was starting to feel more uncertain about this whole thing himself.

“If this is Dragon Island,” said Alvin, pulling Hiccup along with his free left hand, “where are the dragons? And don't smartmouth me by saying that it's you scaring them off,” he added, cutting off Hiccup's thoughts of doing just that.

“I don't know,” Hiccup snapped. He tried to pull away from Alvin's hold, but the man's grip was, if anything, more powerful than Stoick's. It was probably going to leave bruises on his arm as well. “Maybe they're wary of a boat. Maybe there are fewer of them here with the Red Death gone.”

Actually, he was pretty sure that was the case.

“Now, are you going to let me go?”

He raised his hands pointedly. Alvin chewed on the inside of his lip, considering, then used the Gronckle iron dagger to cut Hiccup's bonds and let him go. Rubbing his wrists, Hiccup stepped away, and deliberately did not let his eyes linger on the way that the sheath at Alvin's hip split when he shoved the knife away once again. Gronckle iron gleamed through. It still didn't look quite as impressive as the axe on his back, though.

“Thank you,” said Hiccup tersely, because he at least had to have the moral high ground in the situation.

He glanced around again. It was not the same beach on which Mulch had landed, but the rock formations at one end looked familiar, and he started towards them. He needed to find Toothless, though at a pinch one of the other dragons would do, before he came across any wild dragons. Not that he would usually be too concerned, but about ten paces behind him were a dozen heavily-armed Outcasts, and he would not be surprised or offended if the dragon in question took exception to that.

Perhaps he should get Gobber to make him a whistle. His prosthetic foot slipped and he stumbled, to some laughter from the Outcasts, but Hiccup refused to give them the satisfaction of looking round. He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and wished that he had his cane. Originally, he wasn't sure that he was even supposed to have been off crutches at this point.

He heard the skitter of rocks and froze, turning to look inland. A jagged hole in the rock coalesced into a deeper shadow, opened gleaming eyes, and spread its wings.

“A Night Fury,” said Alvin.

From the corner of his eye, Hiccup saw the crossbow held by one of the men droop towards the ground. “They are real.”

Toothless jumped to the ground, a patch of darkness against the grey rock, and spread his wings. His teeth flashed in his mouth as he hissed in the direction of the Outcasts.

“Not for long,” Alvin said, more firmly. “Moulder. Shoot it.”

“Wait!” said Hiccup, almost frantically. He stepped into their line of fire, putting his back to Toothless. “I thought that you said that you wanted me to prove... myself.”

Behind him, there was a low rumble. He saw one or two of the Outcasts sway back from the sound, and even Alvin hesitated, but to Hiccup there was no sound more welcome.

“Right?” he prompted them.

Alvin looked from Hiccup to Toothless and back again, then gestured for Clenchjaw to lead Elsa across. “Come on then, lass. Let's see how well your friend copes with a real dragon in front of him.”

It took all of Hiccup's nerve not to rise to the bait. Slowly, he started to turn towards Toothless again, but before he lost sight of Alvin completely he saw him grab Elsa and haul her closer. Elsa tried to jerk away, but Alvin tugged harder so that she was right at his side. Toothless shrieked, the sound like a blast across the silent beach and sending rocks falling above them.

When the echoes had died down, Hiccup realised that he had dropped to a crouch, one hand extended towards Toothless and the other towards Alvin. He had not even been thinking about it. He looked to Toothless first, holding his eyes for a long moment until more of the green was visible around the black of his pupils, then back to Alvin.

“I would advise that you don't make any sudden movements,” he said coldly.

“Alvin,” said Savage. He raised his hand as if to draw his axe, but stopped with another look across to Toothless.

Hiccup turned back to the cliffs. Smoke rushed from one of the caves, and then Barf and Belch’s heads nudged out, jaws parted to reveal every one of their shining teeth. Belch hissed, sparker rattling and claws scraping on the stone. A rumbling from another of the caves suggested that a Nadder, probably Stormfly, was nearby as well.

“A mixed pack,” Alvin said. Hiccup winced at the completely incorrect plural noun. “Is this the Night Fury's work, boy?”

“What do you think?” Sometimes it was easier to not really give an answer at all, and let people assume whatever answer they wished to have heard. Elsa shifted her weight at Alvin's side, and Hiccup just caught the flutter of something falling from her wrists. A slip of string, nothing more, but then a second followed it, and as she shifted away again he saw the gleam of exposed Gronckle iron at Alvin's hip.

Ice began to spread across the sand at Elsa's feet, and the thin mist on the air around them turned freezing. Mercifully, that probably wasn't the thing most immediately in the Outcasts' attention as Meatlug loomed out of the fog and settled on the rocks above them.

“You might want to stand back a bit,” said Hiccup.

Alvin hesitated for only a moment before smiling again, putting a hand close to the haft of his axe. “Oh, but I wouldn't want to miss this.”

Hiccup really, really hoped that this was going to work. And, as the sky continued to lighten, that the distant shapes on the horizon were the sails of Berkian ships. He shrugged, as if to say that it was Alvin's loss, but his eyes were on Elsa.

He didn't want to show Alvin that it was something as simple as extending his hand to Toothless – not with a weapon, not to strike, just reaching out. Berk could know that, at his friends could, but it was too... intimate, in a way, to let Alvin see. But he was going to have to do something, or Alvin was going to get suspicious, and somehow he didn't think that Ruffnut's psychic powers were going to cut it.

As he approached Toothless, he cupped his hands around his mouth and did his best to reproduce Toothless's happy, rumbling chuff. It sounded like Gobber clearing his throat. Someone behind him sniggered, briefly, and Alvin grunted in surprise.

“Come on, bud,” he muttered to himself. “Work with me.”

He chuffed again, then grunted into the curve of his hands. The sound was amplified, and the rocks around them gave it a spooky edge that he had not actually been expecting.

“What are you doing?” said Alvin.

Toothless's lifted his head and cocked it, looking for all the world as if he was going to ask Hiccup what he thought that he was doing as well.

Hiccup looked over his shoulder as condescendingly as he could. “I'm telling it to back off.” Finally he drew level with the rock where he had hidden Toothless's saddle, and started to scrape the ice off it with his metal foot. “You might want to let me work at it.”

“You're telling me you did _that_ to the Red Death?”

“I never said that,” said Hiccup calmly. Toothless hissed at him, and Hiccup made a show of hissing back. By luck or reading something in Hiccup's body language, Toothless pranced back a couple of steps, wings flicking at the air. It probably didn't look playful to anyone other than him or Elsa. “Oh,” said Hiccup, “so you want to dance, huh? You want to play?”

With the hand further away from the Outcasts, he gestured for Toothless to come to him. With another shriek, this one less earth-shaking, Toothless bounded towards him, and Hiccup just about had time to brace himself before Toothless knocked him to the ground.

He heard some of the Outcasts gasp as Hiccup hit the ground back-first with a wet slapping sound. It drove the air out of him, but did not really hurt and he was still rushing with relief that they were back together again.

The face-licking might not have been quite so appreciated, but Hiccup could put up with that. At least it wasn't as cold as the hail.

“Back, beast!” he said loudly. “The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself is no match for the dra–” he couldn't even say it. “For me!”

Biting back laughter, Hiccup pushed Toothless's face out of his and scrabbled beside him for the saddle. The metal was cold enough to hurt his hands, but he managed to wrench it free and was just trying to get it onto Toothless's back, behind the flapping wings that provided them with a little bit of cover, when it seemed to dawn on the Outcasts that something was not quite going right.

“Sod it all,” said Alvin. “Just shoot the beast.”

“No!” Hiccup shouted, sitting bolt upright, but the strings of the crossbows were already twanging. Toothless crouched down with a snarl, but the arrows stopped abruptly in the air between them – trapped in a thin, clear sheet of ice.

Hiccup looked at the Outcasts. The Outcasts looked at Hiccup and Toothless. Alvin's hand slipped free of Elsa's arm as he looked in complete bewilderment at the sudden ice, and in a flash she had grabbed the Gronckle iron knife back from his belt once again. It flashed in her left hand, matched by a knife of ice in her right which probably explained how she had managed to get free of her bonds.

“Alvin!” Clenchjaw snapped. Alvin looked from the ice to Elsa, and though he probably did not make the connection he grabbed for her again anyway. She slashed out with the Gronckle iron, and Hiccup saw the spray of blood from Alvin's palm just as he managed to buckle the saddle up and drag himself to his feet again.

Definitely Berkian sails. He could make out the chief's colours on the lead sail, which was not a surprise but was still oddly heartwarming.

Hopefully deliberately breaking part of Toothless's tail and jamming that broken part into a different place wasn't going to do too much damage, but there was only one way to find out. Hiccup swung his leg into the saddle and nudged Toothless with his knee; with a roar so full-blown that it rattled Hiccup's teeth, Toothless obliged by firing into the sheet of ice, sending shards through the air and any number of the Outcasts diving for cover.

“Elsa!” he shouted.

There was blood on her face as she turned to face him. For a moment, all that he was aware of was the horror, the bright red on Elsa's cheeks and in her hair, but as she started running towards him and Toothless lunged forwards he managed to remember the injury she had put on Alvin, the reason for the red now staining the sand.

“Get up!” Alvin shouted. He drew his axe with the hand that was still dripping blood, and snatched up Savage's spilled crossbow with the other. “Shoot them down!”

Elsa hit them at a run. Not feeling that this was any particular time for niceties, Hiccup grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into the saddle as well, and she seemed to agree to judge by the arm looping around his neck. It might have been less alarming without the Gronckle iron knife she was still gripping fiercely, but he wasn't really going to begrudge her that just at the moment.

Hiccup glanced round to the others as Toothless lurched into the air – taking off, but unsteadily, wings beating hard to keep them up. “Stormfly!” he shouted.

Spines hit the ground at Alvin's feet, but it didn't stop him from levelling the crossbow and pulling the trigger. Hiccup tried to peel sideways, feeling Toothless struggle to turn beneath him, then Elsa shifted her weight and he glanced over his shoulder just in time to see her arm stretch out, fingers flaring.

Ice slammed into the crossbow bolt and snatched it from the air. Hiccup watched it tumble down to the ground, encased, then slowly nodded and looked back to the Berkian ships again.

“Good aim,” he said.

Elsa relocated her arm to his waist, which at least stopped waving a knife in his face. It was concerning that he couldn't see where it had gone, though. “It's improved,” she replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the original name of this arc (chapters 1-13)? The Alvin Arc. I'm not very imaginative with arc names, sorry.


	13. Chapter 13

He could feel the drag of the air, Toothless fighting to compensate for his injured tail. “Come on, bud,” said Hiccup. “Come on. You can do it. Come on, buddy.”

With a frustrated shriek, Toothless pitched downwards, then lurched up again, all the time towards the nearer of the ships. Hiccup could see his father at the prow, and Astrid beside him, and gritted his teeth and wished that he could do something to help Toothless make it.

Crystalline sounds cracked in the air behind him, but he dared not look round to check whether it was Elsa's magic or to see exactly what she was doing. All that he could do was give Toothless his head to fly, even as they jolted closer and closer to the sea.

Finally, the air rushed around them, and Hiccup felt them drop sharply. He closed his eyes, ready for the slap and the shock of the freezing water, but Toothless roared again and they tumbled onto ice, slithering across its surface.

Toothless scoured gouges into the surface as he ground to a halt, and Hiccup and Elsa fell from the saddle to hit the ice in turn. Hiccup’s leg jarred, and he looked around in bewilderment as he scrambled to his feet and fought to keep his balance on the ice.

“Did you...?” he looked to Elsa, who was also standing up again. She was breathless, her cheeks flushed from the wind, clinging to the Gronckle iron knife so tightly that her knuckles were white against her pale skin.

She nodded. “I think so.”

Considering it was the only ice floe in sight, and it was so perfectly smooth on the top, Hiccup had no doubt that it was her. Later, he would have time to worry about what the Outcasts were thinking, but for now he turned to hail his father's ship as it hove closer.

The prow of the ship nudged against the ice floe, and Astrid threw across a rope. Hiccup caught hold of it, but there was nowhere to tie it off, and all that he could do was hope that the ship would stay close for long enough for the others to get on board.

“No, don't get off,” said Hiccup, as Astrid went to do just that. He waved her back on the ship, then jerked his head to Elsa for her to climb aboard as well.

She gave the ice another wary look, but accepted Stoick's hand to climb aboard the ship. Hiccup followed the rope, favouring his good leg with the ice, and had one arm grabbed by Stoick and the other by Astrid to be hauled aboard.

“Come on, Toothless,” he said, grabbing the mast to keep upright. It was not a large ship, but it could take a deep enough draft to handle a large catch of fish, and he was pretty sure that it could handle Toothless as well.

Toothless eyed up the boat, hunkered down, and wriggled in place before bounding across and sliding into place on the boards. He seemed to pause for a moment, legs splayed, then pulled up and stood more normally in place.

“Light crews,” said Hiccup to his father. Only one other boat had accompanied them, and though Hiccup did not have an inflated sense of his own importance he would have thought that the Outcasts would merit more than a dozen or so individuals.

Astrid looked grim. “The fire at the docks took out some sails. They'll need repairing.”

After the fight with the Red Death, more damaged boats was the last thing that they needed. Hiccup grimaced, and looked back around. The Outcasts were unfurling their sale and pulling away from the shore, and the shape of their boat meant that they were probably going to be faster than the Berkian ships even without having to come about.

“Great,” said Hiccup. He rubbed his cold, stiff hands together, then stuffed them under his armpits. “Now what are we going to do about the Outcasts?”

“We'll deal with them,” said Stoick. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called to the other ship. “Phlegma, push on!”

“What have you done to the poor beast's tail?” said Gobber, cutting across Hiccup's thoughts. He had dropped to his knee next to Toothless and was examining the locked-open tail.

“It let him fly a way without me,” Hiccup replied.

Gobber snorted. “Obviously not all that well.” He worked the tip of his hook into the tail and forced out the bolt again, sending it pinging across the ship, then hooked up Toothless's tail to the connecting rod. “You couldn't have done that over there?”

“Not without a lever,” said Hiccup. A lever and time, if truth be told, neither of which he had exactly been able to get hold of while he was on the beach. It was with some relief, though, that he slid back into Toothless's saddle and clipped his metal foot into place. The tail was jerky as he moved it back and forth, but that was probably just a day's stiffness and cold, and it was more than good enough to fly.

Turning away from Sven, who was readying their weighted bolas, Stoick caught sight of Hiccup on Toothless's back again. “Oh no,” he said. “You're not going up against them.”

“I'm safer in the sky, Dad,” said Hiccup. Astrid stuck her fingers into her mouth and let out a piercing whistle, and Stormfly dropped down out of the clouds in a blur of blue. “Honestly.”

“And I owe Alvin a greeting,” Astrid added.

Even Hiccup went to say that this was not the time to be getting vengeful, not the time to be letting their emotions get out of hand, but before he could say anything Astrid was in the air again, Stormfly’s wings beating hard. Well, he supposed that the dragon-riding secret was already well out. It probably couldn’t hurt too much to really let Alvin see what he was messing with.

“Hiccup...” Stoick began.

There really wasn’t enough time to argue any more. Hiccup shrugged to his father, glanced across to make sure that Elsa was safe on the boat, then with a nudge of his heel he sent Toothless springing into the air once again.

This time he could feel the way that the air seemed to snap to attention around them. Astrid was already away, whipping through the air with her axed readied in her hand, but when Hiccup tried to bolt after her the stone from a catapult cut across him and sent him wheeling away again.

“Thor,” he hissed, as Toothless rolled in the air to avoid a crossbow bolt that came not long after it. Hiccup could feel the strain in his legs from holding on. The Outcasts were just starting to push their boat away from the shore, men straining at the oars in between reaching for their crossbows. Hiccup wheeled back in the air and swooped low enough beside the ship that he was almost eye-to-eye with his father. “Dad!” he shouted, above the rush of Toothless’s wings. “The Outcasts! We can’t leave them on the island!”

The fact that Alvin knew where it was... well, that was bad enough. The thought of leaving him and his men there, with all of the dragons that probably still made it their home... no. Hiccup could not do that. Stoick looked across, frowning, even as he knocked another arrow to the bow that he was holding. “What?”

“The Outcasts. We can’t leave them with the dragons!”

“I’d fancy leaving them _to_ the dragons!” roared Stoick. He held the arrow to the torch on the side of the bow, lighting the oily rag tied just behind the head, and drew it quickly. The flame was barely coming to life when he fired, sending the arrow arcing neatly towards the Outcast ship.

“There’s a chart,” Hiccup continued. “I need to destroy it. Can we draw them away?”

“How many men?”

“I counted a dozen, plus Alvin.”

Stoick cupped one hand around his mouth and turned to the other ship. “Phlegma, catapults!” There was a shout of acknowledgement, and Hiccup saw a scramble to ready the catapult. His eyes glinted darkly as he turned back to Hiccup. “We can take them down. We’ll take out the rigging, take the boat out, and set it adrift. Let them come back from that.”

It was kinder than some punishments which they could have been given. Outcasts were banished already, and anyone catching one on Berk would be in the right to kill them; leaving them adrift in one of the calmer areas of sea was not the worst thing that would have been done to them in the past. Perhaps they could even use Barf and Belch to tow the ship out.

“I’ll get Astrid,” Hiccup shouted, and with a tilt of his body they were away again.

He cut around just in time to see Astrid pulling in to land on the deserted stretch of shore, and he caught the sound of her shouting. The wind was picking up around them, becoming colder with the threat of snow in the air, and he was not sure whether it was because of Elsa or not. The weather had been quite bad enough on their way here.

What in Odin’s name was Astrid doing? Hiccup swung wide of Alvin’s ship, heading back towards the beach, as Astrid jumped down from Stormfly’s back, landing easily on the wet sand. She darted into the shadows of the cliff that faced the beach, stooped to grab something, and held it tightly to her chest as she reappeared again. Only when he spotted the green and bronze did he realise that it was the Terror from the Arena.

“Astrid,” he groaned, but he knew that he would have done the same thing had he not been so concerned with the crossbows being pointed at them. There was a hefty whoosh from overhead, and Hiccup looked up to see Barf and Belch in the air above him, with two pairs of dangling feet that meant that the twins were back in the saddle as well.

So apparently, things were going to get a little more complicated.

With a touch on the tail, Toothless bolted up to bring Hiccup in line with Ruffnut and Tuffnut. Hiccup cupped his hands around his mouth and put what lungpower he had left behind his words. “Do not fire!” he bellowed.

Ruffnut, sitting closer, turned to him with a wicked smile. “Fire?” she said eagerly.

“No! No fire! We need to get the ship away!” he said. As Belch went to open his mouth, Hiccup dared to lunge closer and clip the underside of the Zippleback’s jaw. Belch turned with an offended look, sending Ruffnut lurching in the air and grabbing at his neck for support. Hiccup pointed at each of the twins in turn. “Hold _back_.”

He needed to get that chart. Swooping high, still out of the range of crossbow bolts, he looked down to see that the Outcasts were unfurling their sails, preparing to take the fight to the open water. Out there, it would still be two against one, but even if Hiccup was no boat-builder he could see that the Outcast ship was built light and fast, and might be able to outstrip the Berkian boats. Not the dragons, though. There was probably nothing else alive that could get away from a Night Fury.

“Come on, bud,” he said, leaning down towards Toothless. “Let’s get those sails.”

Toothless folded in his wings and they fell like a shadow, arching up at the last minute as they levelled out alongside the boat. Some of the Outcasts turned to face them, but it was too late for them to shoot, and Hiccup saw little more than a blur of faces before Toothless fired.

The Night Fury blast ripped through the sail, cracked the mast in two, and sent fragments of wood and rope splintering through the air. Hiccup shielded his face as they flashed through the fireball, heat rolling around them. He could hear the snap of crossbows, but could not see where the bolts were flying as they swept upwards again with smoke still billowing around them.

He spun to see the Outcast’s mast falling, smouldering canvas slapping down on decks and people alike, and grimly hoped that Alvin would have to spare some time to put out the fires. On the beach, Stormfly flared her wings wide enough to cover Astrid as well, and when Hiccup looked more closely at the Outcasts he could see that Savage’s crossbow was pointed towards the beach, rather than out to sea as the others were.

The Berk boats were closing in. It would be a messy fight if swords had to be drawn, and Hiccup did not want that. He looked around to count their forces again: two boats, within firing range but not boarding; four dragons with him and his friends on their backs. Not good.

Fishlegs was only just drawing alongside them, Meatlug’s wings whirring in the air but not able to carry her as quickly as the larger dragons. With a sweep of Toothless’s wings, Hiccup came alongside him, slightly below eye-level.

“Any thoughts?” he shouted across.

“Shouldn’t we wait for your father?” Fishlegs replied.

Technically, yes. But Hiccup had led the Outcasts here and he would be damned if he wasn’t going to fix this. “I’ll get the twins to lay down some gas,” he said. “Flash fire, disorientate them. Then–”

Stormfly was in the air again, sweeping back towards them, but she was too close to the ship. Before Hiccup could cry out, the Outcast’s catapult spun and fired, and as Stormfly rolled away Astrid was dropped with a cry onto the Outcast’s deck.

“Astrid!”

He moved before he was even thinking. Toothless folded in his wings in a pulse and they dropped, faster than falling, down towards the deck. Astrid had barely got to her knees when Alvin grabbed her by the hair and wrenched her upright, earning another furious yell. Hiccup could only think of one thing to do, and it was probably going to count as doing something stupid.

They must have all but appeared out of the smoke. “Night Fury!” Clenchjaw shouted, from the catapult’s side, but Alvin turned too slowly before Hiccup unclipped his foot and threw himself out of Toothless’s saddle, barrelling into the Outcast leader as Toothless skidded along the deck of the ship.

It hurt. Hiccup slammed shoulder-first into Alvin with enough force to send them all sprawling to the ground and make dark spots dance in Hiccup’s vision once again. A stabbing pain ran up his leg, and he gasped for breath as the world made a determined effort to spin. Rolling onto his front, he fought to get his foot under him, but he could not manage to get out of the way before Alvin caught him backhanded across the face, slamming him backwards into what remained of the mast.

Definitely something stupid.

Alvin reached for the hafted axe on his back, expression thunderous and only made worse by the sparks in his beard and hair. But Astrid was faster, nimbler; she snatched up a fallen spar and bought it round, two-handed, to crack into the back of Alvin’s knee. He cried out and stumbled, and she whipped around to thrust the butt of the same piece of wood right into his throat. As he choked, Astrid got to her feet and pulled Hiccup after her.

“Come on!” she said. The words sounded like they were from a long way off.

Hiccup looked at her stupidly for a moment, feeling a stab of fear at the blood on her lip, then she shoved him around and Toothless shrieked behind him, and the two together were enough to snap him back to the moment once again.

With a whip of his tail, Toothless sent Savage to the deck, and raised his head ready to fire at another Outcast. At this range, Hiccup doubted anyone could survive that. He lunged forwards to get his hand to Toothless’s side; the dragon turned with flashing eyes and for a moment, just a moment, Hiccup could see the wild Night Fury again. Then it was gone, faster than a blink, and instead Toothless spun to hit the man with his wing, right below the ribcage, and drop him wheezing to the floor.

A hand wrapped around Hiccup’s wrist. He turned, expecting Astrid, but it was Clenchjaw looming over him with bared teeth and livid red burns stretching down her right arm and already swelling to blisters.

“Got you, boy,” she hissed.

She had a sword in her left hand, and her grip was crushingly tight around Hiccup’s right wrist, but she probably did not know that was not the hand that he used.

He snatched the Gronckle iron knife from her belt, whipping it round to leave one fine cut along the bottom of her forearm. With a scream, she pulled away, dropping his hand, and Hiccup pulled himself into Toothless’s saddle before any of the other Outcasts could find their feet or weapons. When he held out his hand to Astrid, she pressed the Terror into his arms, then slid in tight behind him with Toothless’s muscles already coiling for flight.

A crossbow bolt cut through the air in front of Hiccup even as they took off. Alvin howled in fury after them, but the sound was cut off again as one of the Berk boats slammed into the port side of the Outcast one, and then Stoick was on board.

“That,” panted Astrid, “was really...”

“I know, stupid,” said Hiccup. His ears felt like they were still ringing from Alvin’s blow, and his shoulder hurt enough to drown out the pain in his leg.

Astrid punched him lightly on the arm. “Brave,” she said.

Not a word that Hiccup had ever particularly expected to be associated with. He didn’t know how to reply. As they drew out of crossbow range, he turned back towards the ship just in time to see his father plant a particularly satisfying punch into Alvin’s face, and the other Berkians piling in. They were equally matched in numbers before the second boat even arrived, fresher and angrier, and Hiccup did not feel too guilty for hanging back as the second boat arrived and the Outcasts were completely overwhelmed.

It only took a few minutes before the Outcasts were all bound, hands lashed together and then to stays along the gunwhale, and Hiccup was determined not to find it fitting that it was how he had been not all that long before. He set down on Stoick’s boat once again, slipped off Toothless’s back, and waved for the others to stay in the air rather than try to land as well. The Terror jumped down and hid itself under the bench by which Elsa was standing.

“Are you all right?” said Hiccup immediately. She nodded, though she was still rubbing at her wrists distractedly. “I...” he gestured towards the Outcast boat. “I have to go help deal with this.”

The boats had been lashed together for the Berkians to board, and it was none too hard to climb from one to the other even with the swell of the waves. They were not too strong here, not enough open water to really gain height. Hiccup clambered into the Outcast boat and carefully picked his way through the broken wood and curls of rope that littered the hull.

Alvin’s hands were tied behind him, lashed back to his knees not so tightly as to pull but tight enough that it would stop him from rising. Blood was running from his nose, and one of his eyes was starting to blacken. Phlegma was holding him at swordpoint, far enough out that he could not lunge at to headbutt or bite her, while Stoick saw to it that the others were securely tied.

Hiccup had not intended to talk to Alvin, but it didn’t seem like he had much choice. As soon as he stepped aboard, Alvin was eyeing him, still grinning despite everything that had happened. “Well! Got a few tricks up your sleeves, eh, Hiccup?”

It would do no good to get into any sort of discussion. Hiccup turned to his father. “Is everyone all right?”

“A few injuries. Nothing we can’t deal with ourselves,” Stoick replied. “Despite what was attempted.”

Alvin laughed, by himself. “Come on, Stoick, you know I wasn’t trying to cause no harm. It was the boy’s idea to come out here!”

“It wasn’t my idea to be kidnapped,” said Hiccup. He switched the knife to his right hand and cradled his left to his chest, shoulder still throbbing.

“No,” said Stoick. He was still glaring at Alvin. “That was your idea. And it was a cowardly one, too. You should be ashamed.”

“So you admit that your boy can’t protect himself?” Alvin was still smiling, even with his hands tied and one eye started to swell. Hiccup felt an uncomfortable ripple down his spine. “Well, I suppose that...”

He trailed off as Phlegma pressed the tip of her sword a little harder against his neck, cutting away a little more of his beard as she did so. “Careful, Alvin,” she said coolly.

“You underestimated him, Alvin,” said Stoick, catching Hiccup by surprise. He wiped the blood off his lip with one thumb, then crossed his arms. “And I’d thank you not to come to Berk and risk doing the same again.”

“Stoick,” Hiccup turned mostly away from Alvin, despite the stare that he could still feel on the back of his neck, to face his father. It didn’t feel right to address him by anything other than his given name in front of the Outcasts. “There’s something you should know, about the dragon attack.”

“We found the boat,” said Stoick. “And dealt with it. I know that it was them.”

Alvin’s eyes were still on them, expression feral. Hiccup wondered exactly what he was thinking of, and found himself wondering whether it had been a mistake to talk about the attack at all. If Alvin was as smart as he had seemed, though, he probably would have realised that it was strange that Berk could both have dragon riders and have believed that a Monstrous Nightmare would attack the docks. At least, enough to have to check.

“And you’re lucky, Alvin,” Stoick continued. “It was Hiccup’s idea to let you live. Phlegma!” he whirled away. “Ready the ropes! It’s time to put an end to this.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Outcasts were all bound, gagged and blindfolded before the ships set out again. A good sailor could probably have reconstructed the course otherwise, and though Hiccup was still not entirely certain that it would be enough to keep them away, all that he could do was hope. It was sleeting again as they headed back towards Berk, the dragons having to hang back so as to not outstrip the boats and not knowing what they were going to find waiting for them.

It was probably only approaching midday, and Hiccup was bone-tired. He wished that he could tap into the sort of energy he had found over the summer, when apparently a handful of hours’ sleep a night had been enough for pretty much weeks on end. Perhaps he had kept spare energy in his leg.

Elsa was safely on one of the boats with the Terror, while Snotlout was on the other and still scowling about Hookfang’s disappearance. Even taking the opportunity to give Savage a good kicking in an unfortunate place had not lightened his mood at all. Though it had made it harder to tie up Savage while he had been trying to curl into a whimpering ball.

It seemed like a very long flight back, although that might have been to do with how slowly they were going. The air currents were against the dragons as much as the ocean ones were against the boats, but the dragons didn’t exactly seem to be struggling with it.

They hung back and let the boats dock first; there was a small crowd waiting, indistinct shapes through the murk, and Hiccup could hear his father shouting to them all though he could not make out the words from this distance.

“You think this is going to work?” said Astrid.

“We’re not doing anything _wrong_ ,” Hiccup replied. “It will work.”

He really, really hoped. He still felt like his throat was in his mouth as the boats drew up to the wharves, then without even pausing to call them down Stoick broke into a run up the steps back to the village.

Fishlegs looked around uncertainly. “Er, is that good?”

“You guys stay here,” said Hiccup, for want of a proper answer. He nudged Toothless forwards, and even from beyond catapult distance he met his father at the top of the steps. Toothless skidded to a halt in the slushy snow, and Hiccup went to climb off his back before thinking better of a combination of mud, metal foot and no cane. “Dad?” he called over.

“They’ve found Wartlout,” said Stoick, panting from his run up the stairs. He did not stop, and Hiccup had to lean forwards to encourage Toothless on. “He was in the caves. Unharmed.”

Hiccup laughed with relief, and saw a smile flicker even over his father’s face. That was more than he could have hoped for. Again, he thought about sliding off, then remembered the others still waiting offshore. “I’ll send the gang to the academy,” he said. “Where are you heading?”

“The Jorgensons’.”

Once again, they took to the air. Hiccup was aware of a stiffness in Toothless’s wings, muscles aching. They were usually in the air every day, and moving around even if they weren’t flying; it could not have been good for him to be stuck with limited movement. But with increasing beats of his wings he ate up the distance back, until Hiccup’s eyes watered with the speed of the wind and all that he could hear was the whistling of the air. He was breathless by the time that Toothless snapped to a stop by the others, sending Meatlug shying back in the air.

Astrid looked at him as if there were far too many questions on her mind. “What the–” she began.

“No time,” he said. “It’s going to be all right. Get to the academy. I’ll meet you there.”

He didn’t have time to explain, even if he had been in possession of all of the answers that they needed. Toothless coiled and seemed to spring in the air, everything blurring as they flew back towards Berk once again. _This_ was speed, _this_ was the feeling of being a dragon, of being a Night Fury. It was so fast that Hiccup could barely react to the lines of the houses to turn them towards Snotlout’s, and part of him wondered whether it was Toothless who was actually doing most of the steering.

“There he is!” shouted Hoark, as Toothless landed on the roof of the house. Hiccup winced in preparation of what might follow, but to his surprise there were a few cheers, and a few people shouting his name. “He’s all right!”

It still didn’t feel that normal for people to actually be happy to see him. But it was somewhat hard to think much about that when Toothless leapt down, all but bounced off the steeply-sloping roof of the next house along, and then hit the ground in a hastily-cleared space in the crowd. Hiccup had to wait for a moment for his stomach to catch up.

He slid out of the saddle, grabbing at the side of the house to keep himself upright, and limped towards the open door. Somehow, having thrown himself at Alvin was hurting more and more as the day went on. The door to the house was propped ajar with a rock, but not fully open – people would know it if they were welcome inside.

Before Hiccup could reach it, the crowd parted, and Hiccup was surprised to see Hoark push through on crutches. He was even more surprised to see that the man’s leg was strapped in a similar sort of metal and leather brace to the one which Hiccup had made for Elsa those moons ago. Presumably it had ended up in Gothi’s hands.

“When they saw you were gone, they figured it was the Outcasts,” he said. “We’re glad to see you in one piece still.”

“Mostly,” said Hiccup, with a vague gesture to his leg. He wasn’t sure what else to say as Hoark reached to pat him on the shoulder. “Thanks. Look, I’m sorry, I’ve got to...”

“Go, go.”

Without waiting for anyone else to accost him, he made his way over to the front door and slipped inside, hardly having to push it any further open. Inside was warm and smelled damp, and as Hiccup looked round he realised that it had managed to get pretty crowded.

Wartlout was sitting by the fire, bundled up in so many blankets that he was almost spherical, most of them draped around Pinebolt as well as she held him tightly to her side. A mug had been pressed into his hands, probably filled with something warm as well, and Gothi was sitting in a chair opposite with her feet dangling as she watched them. Stoick had made it back first, and Snotlout as well, to join what looked to be pretty much the whole of the family.

There was a moment’s hush as Hiccup entered, and he paused, uncertain of what was about to come next. When Burplout hurried over from where he had been talking to Duskhowl, it wasn’t exactly reassuring either. But the man’s lips were trembling into a smile, and there was warmth in his reddened eyes as he clasped one of Hiccup’s hands in both of his.

“I’m sorry,” he said, before Hiccup even let out the breath that he was holding. “We found him, and he told us what happened. I shouldn’t have assumed that it was your dragons. I just–”

“It’s fine, really,” said Hiccup earnestly. “You were just worried about Wartlout. I... I understand.”

Not in the same way, he knew that, but he had seen enough of the fear to have felt its echoes. The look in his father’s eyes when Hiccup did something particularly foolhardy tended to be an example of it. Burplout’s smile wavered for a moment, then he squeezed Hiccup’s hand hard enough for it to feel like his bones were clicking together.

“What... did happen?” he added.

“Someone put a sack over his head,” said Brynnhild, “and carried him off to the caves. He wasn’t even heading towards the dragons.”

“I shouldn’t have called for...”

“It wasn’t you,” said Hiccup. When he saw Burplout’s frown, he corrected himself. “Well, all right, so this was the trigger, but there were problems before you came back. Someone’s been out to get the dragons all along, and whoever dumped the blood and the boot in the academy was doing it deliberately.”

Over the heads of the others, Stoick looked sternly at him, and Hiccup swallowed back anything else that he wanted to add.

“But really,” he said, carefully extricating his hand from Burplout’s grip. “I do understand. And it’s not your fault. Now go on, sit with Wartlout.”

If it was strange having his friends, people of his own age, treating him with respect, then having it come from someone twice his age was downright unsettling. Mercifully, Burplout nodded and returned to his son, scrunching in on the other side. Brynnhild patted Hiccup on the shoulder, and when Hiccup looked round she smiled. He had spent enough time in her house when he was young for it to mean a lot.

“Well said,” she said.

There was a rumble from behind them, and Hiccup turned to see Toothless nudge the door open and stick his head through. He cocked his head and chirped.

“Is it all right if...” Hiccup waved at Toothless, and Bynnhild only hesitated for a moment before nodding.

“It’s probably better for him to be in here right now, I suppose. And at least he’ll fit through the door.”

Unlike Hookfang and his habit of sticking his head in through any available window, no doubt. With Wartlout found, all that they needed to do now was get Hookfang back, and things might just be suitable to be called normal once again. “Don’t worry,” said Hiccup. “He likes rafters.”

 

 

 

 

 

Once it became apparent that they were not needed, and the house was definitely starting to feel too full, Stoick gave them his best and extracted himself, Hiccup and Toothless from the house. There was already a pie waiting for them at home by the time that they got there, and Hiccup could not help bursting out laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, and at how simple a gesture could feel like it meant so much after today.

“You back, Burplout back,” said Gobber. “We’re well on our way to getting things sorted.”

“Just Hookfang,” said Hiccup. He sat down and rubbed his temple gingerly. “And figuring out what to do about Alvin.”

“Alvin is not yours to worry about.” Stoick took off his helmet and set it down heavily on the table, then crossed over to where Hiccup was sitting. Before Hiccup could protest, he was pulled back to his feet and into a tight hug that almost pressed the air out of him, but he didn’t care. Stoick had not been able to show too much relief in front of the Outcasts, and then there had been so much else to worry about, but now he just held on. Closing his eyes, Hiccup leant his head against his father’s chest, until finally Stoick drew back again. “The Outcasts have always been a problem. But in history they were not so bold.”

Outcast Island had been occupied, more or less, for over a century. There was land there that was just about farmable, and when the first people had been exiled there they had been left with a few supplies, a few animals and some seeds. But the trees were not supposed to grow tall or straight enough for boat-building, and for most of its time it had been nothing more than a place for Berk to send its most unwanted individuals.

Until, from what Hiccup could gather, Alvin had been exiled, and had taken up the role of chieftain.

“But he knows about the dragons now, and that _is_ on me,” said Hiccup. He sighed. There was a pain behind his eyes again, and he really wished that would stop. It wasn’t as if he was the first person from Berk to spend a couple of days unconscious. “I just... I knew the only way I could be a match for the Outcasts was with Toothless. They barged into the house, they took Elsa, then me... and they’d heard rumours.”

Stoick frowned. “From one of the men who left?”

“Lugstick. But,” he added quickly, before Stoick’s frown could go all the way to being a scowl. “I don’t think it was intentional. Or not all of it was. They had him prisoner, and... he looked pretty beaten up.” To understate the matter. Hiccup swallowed. “He... might still be in the caves down there. I don’t think they took him to Dragon Island with us.”

Of course, there was a possibility that they had taken him back to Outcast Island, the better to get more information from him. But if they had found out all that they wanted or could, then a mouth to feed was a mouth to feed, and an enemy was an enemy.

“We’ll search the caves after Slaughter Day,” said Stoick.

That was tomorrow, of course. Hiccup had almost managed to forget about it with everything else that had happened. “Thank you,” he said. “And as for Alvin–”

“ _If_ we hear from the Outcasts again, it will be dealt with,” said Stoick. “It has been over four years since their ships have met with ours. With any luck, it will be four years more before we see them again.”

“But if–”

“No buts, Hiccup.” Stoick’s tone of voice made it more than clear enough that the conversation was over, and Hiccup gave up and sighed.

He lowered himself back into the chair, using a hand on the armrest to support himself, and found himself oddly aware of how hungry he was. Tired, he had expected, but he would not have guessed that tangling with Alvin the Treacherous was good for working up an appetite. The thought almost made him snort with laughter.

“Say, Dad, about tomorrow,” he tried instead, turning the conversation in a new direction. “All of the kids that are going to need watching, while the Slaughter’s taking place?”

“Those ones that you usually try very hard to not have anything to do with?”

True, Stoick had a point, but that didn’t stop Hiccup from rolling his eyes. Things had changed in the last year. “Well, I was thinking that I could use the day to talk to them all about dragons.”

“I’m not sure that’s the wisest thing to be doing,” said Stoick.

“You said yourself that I should start with Berk!” It seemed a long time ago now, when Hiccup had still been on crutches and without even a metal leg to balance him out a little, but even Stoick had seemed optimistic at the time. “Besides, if the dragons are going to stay around then the kids are going to need to know how to treat them with respect. We teach them how to handle knives and fire – why not the dragons? If they know how to approach them, it can only be safer all round.”

Stoick was still looking unconvinced, but Hiccup could see the first cracks forming, the first hints that he might just be able to break through.

“I’ve been talking to some of them, here and there,” he pressed on. “And they aren’t scared of the dragons, Dad, or at least they get past that fear quickly enough. Plus one of the reasons that we were worried about Wartlout was in case he had done something that scared Hookfang. They need to know which dragons spook easily, which ones are bad around blades. And dragons like Toothless or Meatlug, who are better around people...”

He let it hang in the air for a long, tantalising moment, until Stoick took a deep breath and nodded. “The parents need to be aware of what you’re going to be doing,” he said. Hiccup grinned. “And any of your friends that can be spared need to help you.”

“Astrid is always free on Slaughtering Day,” he said. “Fishlegs sometimes is. And Elsa can come with us as well, right?” He did not even wait for his father to nod before continuing, still not wholly sure that permission was not about to be revoked. “The twins will be needed with the yaks, but then again that might actually make things safer...”

“All right, all right!” Stoick held up his hands, but unless Hiccup was hugely mistaken there was a bit of amusement in his voice. “I can see that you’ve been thinking about this for a while. Just be careful with everyone.”

“I will, Dad,” he promised. After the last few weeks, children suddenly didn’t sound like that much of a challenge. Especially when dragons seemed to be a sure-fire way to keep their attention anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of the Alvin Arc! Next up: the Snoggletog Arc.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the Snoggletog Arc! This should be chapters 14-24.

All that Hiccup wanted to do, after Elsa had returned and Gobber had thrust some food at the pair of them, was sleep. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option with how much still needed to be done, and instead he waited until his father had left, and the great horn was sounding three long blasts to call home anyone that was still out searching, only to pull on warm clothes and retrieve his cane once again.

“Hiccup?” said Elsa, as he was about to leave. He paused, one hand on the doorknob, Toothless standing beside him. “You are going out again?”

“Gotta find Hookfang,” he said, summoning up the best smile that he could. Elsa had changed as well, into another set of second-hand clothes that did not quite fit her properly, and pulled her hair back into a braid again. “Are you going to be all right here?”

Elsa’s hands wrapped together, fingers running over her bare wrists. “I think I would rather come with you,” she said finally.

That caught him off-guard. Hiccup stood blinking for a moment, still in the doorway, until Toothless’s head brushed against his hand. “Sure,” he said. “The others are probably still up at the academy. I just need to get Snotlout, and then... we’re going to go look for Hookfang.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Elsa. He didn’t think that she was teasing. She lowered the curtain over her room and came to join him, reaching out a hand for Toothless to rub up against. Hiccup almost went to ask whether she wanted to put on a cloak, then remembered to whom he was talking and just opened the door instead.

It was easier having the cane again, he could say that much, even if his right hand was feeling oddly sore around it. Berk was pretty quiet, despite the trampled, ruined snow, but light poured from more than a few windows and crept around the edges of doors. By the Great Hall, the large firepits were burning again, giving some warmth to the otherwise silvery light that was filtering down through the thin clouds.

First stop was the Jorgenson house, but they didn’t even need to get to the front door before Hiccup saw Snotlout stomping through the snow with a bucket of water in each hand. The younger boy’s head was down, his shoulders hunched, and apparently even the return of his cousin had not been enough.

“Snotlout!” Hiccup called. No response, which wasn’t all that much of a surprise. Rolling his eyes, he did his best to walk evenly across the slushy snow. “Snotlout, look over here already.”

Still nothing.

Hiccup ran his hand between Toothless’s shoulders. “Go on, bud,” he said with a sigh.

Toothless bounded forwards, covering the ground between them in a few great leaps and spinning to a halt in front of Snotlout. It was a little bit gratifying when that was enough to make Snotlout drop his buckets and stagger back a pace, then turn to glare at Hiccup over Toothless’s welcoming chirrup.

“So, now do I have your attention? Thank you,” said Hiccup with a wave. “Come on. We’re going to the academy, and then we’re going to find Hookfang, and it’s probably going to be easier with you to tell us where he likes to hide out.”

“What?” Snotlout’s face twisted with confusion.

“Take the buckets to your house and grab your dragon-riding boots,” said Hiccup, in the best imitation of his father that he could manage. Somehow, it worked enough for Snotlout’s eyebrows to raise and jaw to drop, and for him to obediently pick up the buckets once again. “We’re going to get your dragon back.”

He cocked his head slightly, and Toothless bounded back with a swoop of his wings and an almost questioning look. With one last glance at Hiccup, Snotlout hurried back towards his house.

“Did that just work?” said Hiccup, out of the corner of his mouth.

“I believe so,” Elsa replied.

Well, it seemed like you really could learn something new every day. Like how to get Snotlout to do as he was told. As Snotlout hurried into the house, Hiccup made his way over rather more sedately, and had barely reached it by the time that Snotlout fell back out of the door once again pulling on a new pair of boots altogether. Hiccup hadn’t expected that to be quite so literal.

Snotlout fell in beside them, and Hiccup turned them back towards the academy once again. “How’s Wartlout doing?”

“Better,” said Snotlout. “Burplout’s still...”

“It’s fine,” Hiccup said, all over again. “Things happen. True, they aren’t usually these sorts of things, but they happen. And now, we’re going to get your dragon back.”

As they left the village, the snow became less trampled, the path to the academy more pristine. Hiccup started prodding with his cane before he took his steps, knowing how uneven the ground was in places.

“Why are you doing this?” blurted Snotlout, when the academy was only a couple of corners away.

“Doing what, exactly?” He was pretty sure that Snotlout was commenting on the way that Hiccup’s foot would occasionally slip on the snow.

Snotlout mumbled something nervously, and Hiccup worked not to look too exasperated. “Being _nice_ to me,” he said finally.

“Hookfang’s not just your dragon,” said Hiccup. “He’s one of _our_ dragons. _Berk’s_ dragons. And we probably owe him about a _tuna_ for how everyone’s been treating him. But what we don’t owe him is hiding out in a cold cave or whatever he’s currently doing.”

He wasn’t really sure what dragons did when they were left to their own devices. Toothless had liked the caves in the cove, he knew that, or at least had liked to share them with Elsa. Whether that was the cave or the company was a little harder to tell, though.

Snotlout opened his mouth, then closed it again. Maybe that was a good thing.

There was movement at the entrance to the Academy, just huddled figures. Then Stormfly’s perked her head up into view, turned it so that she could look at them with each eye, and shrieked.

“Hiccup!” Astrid called, running down the slope towards them. She slipped, turned it into an enviably smooth slide, skidded to a pink-cheeked halt right at Elsa’s side. “Elsa... Snotlout... where have you been?”

“Checking on Wartlout,” said Hiccup. It wasn’t technically a lie, though he did feel a little bit bad for grabbing food while the rest of them were still up here. Hopefully they had managed to get something earlier in the day. “And now we’re going to find Hookfang. Everyone got their saddles back on?”

“We were more trying to figure out what to do with the frozen blood,” said Astrid, jerking her thumb in the direction of the arena.

“The stone is surprisingly easy to clean,” said Hiccup, from experience. “But I’ve never played hide-and-seek with a Monstrous Nightmare before. Think we can win?”

Astrid looked at him for a very long few seconds, lips pressed firmly together. “I don’t know how you come out with things like that,” she said finally.

“Years of practice being the weird one,” he said airily. “Elsa, are you all right to ride with Astrid? Snotlout should be with me; Toothless is the fastest.”

“Yes,” said Elsa, with one last pat to Toothless’s back.

“Good. Now let’s get the others.” It actually felt like he wasn’t inviting arguments for a change. “Let’s bring Hookfang back.”

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                   

He felt rather less in charge after the better part of an morning in the air. Mostly, by then, he felt cold, with fingers so stiff that he could hardly hold onto Toothless’s saddle, Snotlout grumbling behind him, and Ruffnut and Tuffnut constantly arguing over... well, pretty much everything.

“For the last _time_ ,” Snotlout bellowed at the twins, making Hiccup’s ears hurt, “That is a _rock_! My dragon does not look like _a rock_!”

“But it’s a _dragony_ rock!” said Tuffnut.

“One,” muttered Hiccup beneath his breath, “two, three.”

“Is not,” Ruffnut replied, clipping her brother around the ear. “It’s a rocky _dragon_.”

“Four. Five.”

Tuffnut turned, frowning. “Is too.”

The last couple of times, Hiccup had shouted at them to be quiet, but he honestly wasn’t sure if his voice was going to hold out if he kept this up much longer. Stoick must have a throat made of iron. Instead, he urged Toothless down a way, leaving the shouting above their heads.

“This is our second time around the sea stacks,” he pointed out to Snotlout. “Are you sure that this is where Hookfang would go?”

“Yes!” said Snotlout. “This is always where we go flying!”

“You’ve been flying by yourselves?” That was genuinely interesting, and not something that Hiccup had expected. From Snotlout, at least. He knew that Astrid and Stormfly had been out flying by themselves occasionally, and that the twins and Barf and Belch had been setting things on fire. Snotlout, on the other hand, was more of a surprise.

A grunt for an answer. Not overly eloquent, but at least something.

Hiccup sighed. “Look, if there’s somewhere else you can think of...”

“Try lower down,” said Snotlout. “He likes the caves at water level.”

Of course the dragon which liked to set itself on fire would like to hang around at water level. The waves had grown higher, more choppy, over the course of the morning, but Hiccup took Toothless as far down as he dared, until the highest breaking waves flicked spray across his legs. The cold water stung like tiny blades against his calf and knees, but even Snotlout didn’t complain as they swooped around the bases of the stacks.

Flashing shadows above him meant that the others were probably peeling down as well. Hiccup kept his eyes on the base of the limestone stacks, the hollows and dark spaces around them. He saw the shadow of something against the water’s surface, but could not be sure whether it was anything more than a cloud, or the twins, or just a shoal of fish underneath.

Suddenly, Snotlout grabbed hold of his shoulder, loud enough for Hiccup to hiss with pain. Definitely bruises from Alvin there. “There!” said Snotlout. Hiccup followed the line of his arm to what looked like nothing more than a smudge on the rocks. “That cave!”

“That’s a _cave_?” Hiccup blinked a few times, squinted, but turned Toothless in the appropriate direction. The waves were getting worse, wind whipping them up, and even Toothless gave an indignant cry as the wind almost pushed them against the rocks. “How did you land in this?”

“He goes in the water,” said Snotlout.

Of course he did. Hiccup rolled his eyes, but kept most of his thoughts on that matter to himself. “Well, maybe not in this weather,” he went for. “Come on.”

The wind was too strong for them to do this carefully. Flexing his fingers against the stiffness, Hiccup reached down and rubbed the back of Toothless’s neck, just behind the flaps.

“All right, bud,” he muttered. “Let’s do this.”

Toothless half-furled his wings, and they dropped fast enough that the wind and seawater stung in Hiccup’s eyes. All that he could do was aim at the shadows and hope, until he felt and heard Toothless’s wings snap open again and they all but slammed into the cave.

Well, splashed as much as slammed. They landed in freezing, choppy water, tumbling against _something_ in the rocks that was still hard but was definitely alive, just made up of solid muscle instead.

Definitely not a whale, from the feel of it, and the only other thing this large would be a dragon. Hiccup started hoping fervently that this was indeed Hookfang.

Toothless got his feet beneath him again, and Hiccup righted himself in the saddle even as Snotlout either slid out or fell off. The angle of the cave, tucked away between two folds of rock outside, made it hard for light to get in, and Hiccup squeezed his eyes shut for a few second before opening them again to faint outlines around them.

Eyes opened, and jaws parted to reveal glittering teeth. The dragon hissed. Clutching at his helmet, Snotlout staggered upright in the calf-deep water, splashing noisily about. Hiccup could hear the slither of scales on rock as the dragon shifted, and felt a deep rumble in Toothless’s chest that only dulled when Hiccup put a hand between his shoulders.

“Hookfang?” The shaking in Snotlout’s voice was amplified by the rock around them. “Hookie? It’s just me, big guy...”

“Should’ve bought a lantern,” said Hiccup to himself. Even a candle would have been better than nothing. He tried shielding his eyes against the cave opening, but still could not see anything more than a faint outline of grey against blackness.

With a shriek, Toothless reared onto his hind legs, firing into the air. Light filled the cavern, sounding and looking like a lightning strike in the confined space, and Hiccup’s ears were throbbing, aftercolours flashing in his vision, as he grabbed at Toothless’s saddle to stay in place.

“Will you _keep control of him_?” hissed Snotlout.

Hiccup did not dignify that with an answer. He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, then looked for a long moment at the scene before him. It seemed brighter than before. At first, he thought that he was imagining it, then he looked up to see that a patch of rock above them was still glowing, half-molten against the darkness.

By the extra light, he could see that the dragon was reddish in colour, with no tines on its horns, and as it turned its eyes on them it closed its mouth once again. Breathing hard, Snotlout waded forwards and extended his hand; after a moment, Hookfang shifted to rub his nose against Snotlout’s hand in return.

Splashing wildly, Snotlout scrambled up and threw his arms around Hookfang’s neck, giving a grunting laugh. Hookfang’s wings rose out of the water, so close by that Toothless hopped sideways as well, and Hiccup looked round to see a rip in one of the flaps of his wings. He urged Toothless closer, reaching out carefully, but he had not even touched the membrane when Snotlout lurched backwards again.

“He’s bleeding. He’s bleeding!” He turned to Hiccup, as if expecting him to fix it on the spot.

Sitting in seawater for a couple of days probably hadn’t been helping, the more rational part of Hiccup’s mind supplied, but that did not stop his stomach from lurching and bile from rising in his throat. Someone had hurt Hookfang. Not because the dragons were taking their food, not because they thought they were in danger, but while he had been waiting patiently in his pen for the night, probably even trying to sleep.

“It’s all right,” said Hiccup quickly. “We’ll get him back to the academy, and we’ll get Gobber to have a look at him. We’ll get him fixed up. Do you think he can fly?”

“Can you fly?” said Snotlout to Hookfang, then seemed to realise what he was doing and straightened up, looking round haughtily. “I mean, of course he can fly. He’s a warrior.”

The light dimmed in the cave, and Hiccup looked up to the molten patch of rock above them before turning out to the cave entrance. Silhouetted in the cave entrance were Fishlegs and Meatlug, shadows against the clouds.

“Guys?” called Fishlegs. “Are you in there?”

“We’ll be right out!” said Hiccup. “You’ll need to move out the way!”

“All right.” The rate at which Fishlegs moved aside could frankly have been called hasty, and Hiccup could not help but smile. He would not want to get in the way of a Monstrous Nightmare and a Night Fury, either. “They’re fine!” Fishlegs shouted away, fainter now.

“I’ll go first,” said Hiccup, to Snotlout this time. He nudged Toothless away as Hookfang let Snotlout get into place and then got to his feet, just about filling the cave. Hiccup had to duck beneath the wings that moved above his head.

It would have taken them hours, if not days, to search all of this by boat, but they had managed it in almost no time at all between the dragons and, to be fair, Snotlout’s knowledge of where Hookfang liked to spend his time. Hiccup spared another glance for Snotlout, still clinging to Hookfang’s horns as if he was worried the Nightmare was going to flee without him.

He really wasn’t as good of an actor as he seemed to think.

 

 

 

 

 

Mercifully, it turned out that Hookfang could fly, though his movements seemed lethargic and he didn’t seem at all inclined to set himself on fire again as they made their way back towards Berk. Snotlout clung tightly to his horns, expression wavering between delight at having his dragon back and concern over the state they had found him in. If Hiccup were anyone to judge, at least, and though Snotlout could still be a mystery sometimes he was much less of one when it came to Hookfang.

As Berk came back into view, Astrid pulled ahead of the others, with a glance back towards Hiccup that was definitely meant to convey a message. With the slightest nudge of his knee, Hiccup asked Toothless to speed up so that they could draw alongside the girls.

“Good find,” said Astrid.

He had to admit where the knowledge had come from, though. “It was Snotlout.”

“And your idea. How do you think he got there?”

Hiccup glanced over his shoulder, to where Snotlout was following doggedly while the twins swooped above overhead and Fishlegs, actually looking a little concerned, kept pace just over a wingspan away. “Went to hide out, I think. That wing doesn’t look like an accident.”

Back in Berk, and in better light, he might be able to be more certain about it. Even if he couldn’t tell, Gobber probably could. But even if wings were just membrane, just skin, a dragon’s skin was tough enough to handle tree branches or anything else that might pass as an _accident_. Only metal weapons, or another dragon, would be able to do that sort of damage.

“You think this could have been Alvin?”

“No,” said Hiccup, after only a moment’s hesitation. “Alvin didn’t know enough about Berk to do this.”

But his father might say that it was. For now, Hiccup supposed, it would be acceptable. The important part was that people knew this was no fault of the dragons, that it had been _humans_ who had been to blame. The fact that it was Mildew – and oh, but Hiccup was still pretty sure that it was Mildew – was actually coming in second to that.

“Anyway, right now I’m worried about Hookfang,” he said firmly. “I’m gonna fly ahead and get Gobber; I think we’ll need him. Reckon you two can keep track of the rest of them for a while?”

Astrid gave a pointed look in the direction of the twins, who were now trying to dangle upside-down from Barf’s and Belch’s necks, but Elsa nodded. “It is not far.”

He refrained from pointing out how little distance the twins needed to cause trouble, and instead bent closer to Toothless’s saddle. Toothless felt the movement, and his muscles coiled into readiness before Hiccup even moved the tail position. No sooner was the tail open than Toothless pushed forwards in the air, feeling as fast as the lightning. Maybe he was just enjoying having the air around him again, or maybe he understood enough to be worried about Hookfang as well.

Berk swelled up as they drew closer, and Hiccup almost headed for home before seeing the firelight at the smithy. It would not be Dogsbreath, not now. With a tilt of his body, Toothless arced in the air, and they swept down to land at the very doorway. Worry for Hookfang still coursed through Hiccup, and he tried to dismount as soon as Toothless’s forefeet hit the ground, but his left foot did not unclip cleanly and the next thing that he knew, he was tumbling down into the snow instead.

“Odin’s beard!” he groused, mostly into the snow as he tried to get himself upright again. It was no mean feat to get his balance again and push himself upright, and by the time that he did Gobber had appeared from the smithy with tongs on his left arm and a frown.

“New style?” he said, the concern in his expression fading as Hiccup got up and brushed the snow off himself.

“Something like that.”

“What brings you tumbling down?”

Hiccup drew his cane, pointing with the other hand to the distant moving specks that were the other dragons. “We found Hookfang. But he’s hurt. I figured we might need...”

“A bit of old Gobber’s knowledge? Aye, well, I think we can see to that. Was just straightening out an old ploughshare,” he added. “Let me quench it and I’ll be as good as done. Come on,” he added, turning back into the store.

The heat from the smithy was impressive at the warmest of times, but in the cold of winter it felt ferocious. Hiccup leant on the doorframe, pushing his cloak back over his shoulders but not bothering to take it off altogether.

“What’s happened, then?” said Gobber.

“Rip in his wing membrane,” said Hiccup. “It didn’t look too severe – I mean, he can still fly – but, well, wings and tail.” He reached down one hand to run over Toothless’s head, reassured just by the feeling of having him there. Having him back. “And there was blood on his neck. I couldn’t see what that was from.”

Gobber picked up the ploughshare on which he had been working, still glowing cherry-red, and turned it back and forth to check how straight it was. “I’ve patched up worse after the arena,” he said.

Hiccup winced slightly, but mercifully Gobber was turned away as he quenched the metal in the trough of water on the far side of the smithy. Clouds of steam billowed up. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it all the same. It probably meant more to go from killing dragons to helping them than it had to make the change that he had done. “Is there anything we need to do?”

“It’ll be best to rest him for a few weeks,” said Gobber. “Give the wing time. But dragons heal fast, you know.” He set the ploughshare on the workbench, scored and singed from years of use, and went to change his hand from the selection on the wall. “We’ll see about the neck. Might need to put something on it to stop it getting infected, same as you would with a human. Slightly different herbs, though.”

“Really?” he couldn’t help perking up a bit at that. There had been nothing about this sort of thing in the Book of Dragons, of course, not in Stoick’s version nor Gobber’s, but it would be something that they would need to know now. “Could you show me which ones?”

Gobber grinned as he fastened on his hook. “Of course! Good to know I’ve not fallen out of use just yet!” He squinted over Hiccup’s shoulder, shielding his eyes from the firelight with his right hand. “Looks like they’re getting close. Where did you tell them to land?”

It was a good thing that Night Furies were very visible against the snow. “We’ll hop up onto the roof and signal them down,” said Hiccup.

“Good thinking. I’ll go grab some things from the house.” Gobber patted him on the shoulder on his way through. “Just try not to fall off again, hmm?”

 

 

 

 

 

Hookfang was ordered to at least one moon’s rest, but he didn’t seem to mind all that much, far more interested in the barrel of fish that Brynnhild had managed to procure for him. She watched with a cautious smile as her son fussed over his dragon, bickering with Gobber over the correct way to put the herb poultice on Hookfang’s neck until Gobber made a pointed suggestion involving his hook and Snotlout finally backed down.

“So,” said Astrid, sitting down beside Hiccup on the bench that backed onto the Jorgenson house, “did your father blame it all on Alvin in the end?”

He nodded. “It’s probably for the best. We probably don’t need suspicions all over the place right now.” For a moment he looked away from Hookfang to Elsa, who was throwing small snowballs for Toothless to snap out of the air. The twins had started off trying to do the same thing for Barf and Belch, and ended up rolling around in the snow fighting instead.

“And let me guess,” Astrid continued, “you’re going to continue trying to find the actual culprit anyway.”

Hiccup gave her what was meant to be a winning smile, but which only earnt him a spectacularly unimpressed look. With a more contrite expression, he leant back against the wooden wall of the house. “I’m not letting them get away with this. And with the Slaughter tomorrow, and Snoggletog coming up, people are going to be concentrating on those anyway. The dragons shouldn’t seem so big of an issue.”

She shook her head. “Snoggletog with dragons. Wouldn’t have thought of that, a year ago.”

“Who’s the bravest dragon on Berk?” Snotlout knelt in the muddy slush in front of Hookfang, trying to cup the dragon’s huge jaw in his hands and talking in a tone worryingly similar to the one which Hiccup usually saw used towards small children. For his part, Hookfang was still more interested in the fish. “Who’s the boldest warrior in the Archipelago?”

“Things do change,” said Hiccup.

“Yeah,” said Astrid, with a snort. “That’s an understatement.”


	15. Chapter 15

Slaughter Day always meant all hands on deck. In previous years, Hiccup had usually found himself sharpening knives for most of the day, because it was remarkable how even Vikings who had been doing this for years could end up dulling their knives on bone when the sheep got ideas of last-minute revenge into their heads.  Children young enough were just swaddled into place while their mothers joined in, but unfortunately that usually left two or three dozen children who were old enough to cause trouble but not quite old enough to be trusted to help.

It probably would have been Hoark’s job to watch them this year, along with maybe a few others who either could not help much with the slaughter or who were capable of keeping that number of children in line with a minimum of effort. Hiccup was not even out of bed before he was wondering why he had ever volunteered for this.

Oh, yes. Dragons.

There was porridge waiting on the table, and he put the bowl back by the fire to warm up as he set about putting Toothless’s tail back on. Perhaps it was the excitement in the air, but Toothless was bounding about, tail flicking back and forth, making little chirping sounds deep in his throat; Hiccup tried to buckle his saddle and ended up falling on his backside instead. He burst out laughing, just as Elsa stepped out of her room and looked at him curiously.

“Are you all right?”

Whether that was aimed at the laughter or at being on his backside on the floor, he didn’t bother to ask. “I’m fine. Toothless is just being... Toothless. You feeling up to today?”

He grabbed the flapping straps and buckled them into place while Toothless was still looking at Elsa. With a rumble of surprise, Toothless staggered sideways, looking under his own armpit as if the saddle was somehow new and had not been part of his life for several moons now.

“I think so,” said Elsa. “You are sure that you want me there?”

Wooden floors were easier. Hiccup got his good leg underneath him and stood up, only wobbling slightly, and gave Elsa what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Of course I do. Plus, you know Toothless as well as I do. Breakfast?”

Perhaps it worked. He coaxed the porridge to something approaching an edible temperature and tried not to think about just how nervous he was feeling as they left, Toothless still bouncing through the new layer of snow that had fallen overnight. Rather than make everyone walk out to the arena, Hiccup had laid claim to what passed in summer for the village green. In autumn it was more of a village brown, and right now it was probably going to be a sort of sludgy greyish white, but it would be large enough for all of the dragons and that was the most important part right now.

The bright blue of Stormfly’s scales stood out, and Hiccup smiled as he saw Astrid standing beside her, wrapped up warmly. Meatlug was less immediately obvious, close to a building, but the hatchlings flitting around her did help to make her stand out again.

“Good morning!” he called, carefully prodding the ground to avoid falling into the ditch that surrounded the would-be green. “Nice to see some of us are already here.”

“Oh, Snotlout has been and gone,” said Astrid meaningfully. When Hiccup looked round, she made a show of dusting some flakes of snow off Stormfly’s back. “He came, he grumbled, he said something about taking care of his dragon today, he went to help with the Slaughter.”

That would happen, he supposed, when you showed a knack for wrestling animals down so that they could be knocked out. There were plenty of things that Hiccup could say on that matter, but it would probably be wiser if he didn’t.

“Well, I’m going to be talking about Hookfang,” he said. “You’ve got Stormfly, Fishlegs is with Meatlug, Elsa will talk about Toothless, and we’ll... take it in turns for Barf and Belch, perhaps. Or do them first.”

The twins were definitely going to be needed to help deal with the culling of this year’s yaks. A Monstrous Nightmare or a Zippleback was more than capable of carrying off even a full grown yak, and even if the peace with the dragons had come more than half-way through the year, the number of extra yaks they had was noticeable. There were going to be more yak hair jackets around this winter.

“I think we’ve got that covered.” Astrid grinned, leaning against Stormfly.

Had he missed something? Hiccup frowned, trying to read something else in Astrid’s smile, then he felt a gentle tap on his upper arm and Elsa pointed round the side of the nearest building. He leant to look round. Barf and Belch were curled up in the lee of the building, tails flicking gently, while Astrid’s mother fed them fish-heads. She was even, Hiccup noticed, making sure that she held them out to both heads at the same time so there was no chance of one head seeing it as favouritism.

“Mrs. Hofferson,” said Hiccup, nodding his head.

Astrid’s mother looked round with an easy smile. She and Astrid looked similar, though her hair was slightly darker and done up more tightly against the back of her head and her eyes were a little lighter. She wore sturdy clothes, as always, a fur-lined tunic and heavy breeches that would cope with the Wildlands as well as with the normal travails of Berk.

“Runa,” she said immediately.

“Runa. You seem to be getting on well with them,” he added, gesturing to Barf and Belch with his cane.

She took two more fish-heads from the bucket and held them out to be plucked from her hands. “They seem easy enough to handle. Just treat them equally. Not that different from children.”

The way that Astrid frowned was enough to make Hiccup turn his laughter into a cough. He hid his mouth with his hand for a moment, until he could trust himself to reply. “Well, thank you. For the offer. I’m sure we can cope, I mean, I don’t want to impose or anything...”

What he was half-wanting to say was that the point of this was to tell the children things that they would not otherwise have known about the dragons. To make them, for want of a better expression, into people. Not things that deserved to be killed, in the way that they had been killed for generations now.

“Don’t worry,” said Runa. “I’ve been living in the house with Stormfly as well. And that Terror. And Astrid says that she knows about the Zippleback.”

Hearing Stormfly’s name on someone else’s lips, on the lips of someone that was not part of their so small, so tight-knit group, made Hiccup’s heart feel a little bit tight in his chest. He couldn’t really refuse Runa after hearing her use it, and just sort of nodded mutely as Astrid and her mother exchanged a look and swapped dragons.

“And the Terror is...”

“Carr said something about feeding it the eyeballs,” said Runa matter-of-factly. She walked round to Stormfly’s head and stood squarely in the blind spot, letting Stormfly get a good, non-threatened sniff of her. “And other parts that aren’t even good for stew. I decided not to ask too many questions.”

“He’s... gotten pretty fond of it, sounds like. Where _is_ Hookfang?”

Runa made a vague amused sound that once again sounded very much like Astrid, then reached out her hand and let Stormfly press her nose against it.

Astrid jerked a thumb towards the next building along, which Hiccup took to mean that Hookfang was lying in the lee of it as well. “And what my mother means to say,” said Astrid, “that the Terror no longer hides in the chimney but sleeps in their room. And eats all of our leftovers.”

“And that fish stew,” added Runa, tone slightly less impressed.

Astrid tossed two fish-heads into the air for Barf and Belch to catch. “And the fish stew. He decided to thank us for that by doing the... sharing thing?” She looked round, and Hiccup nodded, knowing exactly what dragons did that could elicit that sort of annoyed response. “I tried to explain.”

“Think of it as...” Hiccup turned back to Runa, who was now scratching at Stormfly’s nose and paying particular attention to a flaky-looking spot just below the horn. “Well, they are sharing. They’re saying, ‘This dinner is great! You should try some as well!’”

Runa looked round to him and raised one eyebrow. It was disconcerting on several levels – largely that an adult was still communicating so frankly and informally with him. It also looked a lot like Astrid when she was pointing out that Hiccup was about to do something stupid.

With a nervous laugh, Hiccup turned back to Elsa. “So, you’re all set? Know what you’re going to say about Toothless?”

“No ‘gory details’, I know,” she said, with just enough edge in her voice to suggest an imitation of him without going flat-out. Any message which she relayed from his father was starting to have the same hint of a brogue as well. She took a deep breath, and clasped her hands in front of herself. “I think that I will be all right.”

“All right,” said Hiccup. He fought the urge to take steps that were going to look too much like skips as he backed up into the middle of the green. “Sun’ll be over the horizon before too long, they should be blowing the horn for all hands to Slaughter Day soon enough, so the kids will be heading this way. All we need to do is get them into groups, and we should have plenty of time with each dragon. Are we ready?”

It dawned upon him that he had been talking increasingly zealously, gesturing with his free hand and slowly turning to face them all one-by-one. Astrid was looking at him dubiously, Elsa and Runa both had a look that was gently polite, and only Fishlegs was really looking enthusiastic, now clutching both Skyfire and Silversnap to him.

“This is so exciting!” said Fishlegs.

Astrid’s response was more than a little more restrained. “I think we’re ready.”

 

 

 

 

 

“I never want to deal with children again,” said Hiccup, through gritted teeth.

“You don’t say.” Astrid drew up alongside him in the air, so close that as both dragons dropped to a glide their wingtips were nearly touching. Perhaps his terrified expression in the face of actual children had been visible from all the way across the green.

With the slightest shift of his weight, Hiccup rolled them in the air so that Toothless was upside down, still gliding, above Stormfly. If he reached down and Astrid reached up, he could probably have just about touched her fingertips. There were some shouts of encouragement – he hoped – from below them, and Toothless cocked his head, plates fluttering in the wind.

“Show off,” said Astrid.

Hiccup grinned and shrugged, taking his hands off the saddle for a moment. It made his legs ache just a little more, but was worth it for the way that Astrid’s eyes narrowed.

“Fine,” she said. She dropped away from beneath him, and Hiccup let Toothless roll back upright again as Astrid swooped low over the green, barely above the rooves of the houses. She untied the rope around her waist that had done for a safety line for the last few weeks, and pushed her feet underneath her, planting one on the saddle and one on Stormfly’s back. She crouched, to screams from the watching children, then lifted her hands and pushed to a standing position, knees still slightly bent for balance and fringe whipping back off her face.

There was an outburst of applause from ground level. Fishlegs and Elsa had opted to stay down there, with Meatlug, Barf and Belch, Hookfang, and the hatchlings, who had fallen asleep with the amount of scraps of fish that they had been fed by the various children.

Astrid dropped herself back into the saddle, looked round to Hiccup, and mimicked his shrug. The message was perfectly clear.

It had started snowing perhaps an hour ago, and Hiccup had spent several times that length of time answering children’s questions ranging from easy ones, like how he had worked out that they could fly together, to ones for which he did not have the answer, like how it could have been right to kill so many dragons but now right to not be killing them as well. In short, the answer had been the Red Death, but it was more complex than that

And then, of course, there had been the extensive questions about dragon poo. He probably could have lived without those.

Hiccup turned his eyes upwards, and shifted Toothless’s tail. The questions fell away as the wind rushed around him, and though he heard something going on at ground level it faded away as Toothless’s wings carried them straight up, the air cold and damp and quite possibly made up of thin clouds around them.

Last time he’d done this, he had still been using his flesh-and-bone foot. Glancing over his shoulder to the distant ground below, he urged Toothless just a little higher before they levelled out.

“You ready, bud?” he breathed. They were so high that he could feel the air getting a little thinner, his breathing getting a little harder.

Toothless looked back over his shoulder and cocked his head, mouth opening just a little. Sometimes, Hiccup wondered how much he understood. Sometimes it didn’t matter.

“All right,” said Hiccup, this time more to himself. He unclipped his harness from the saddle, took the deepest breath that he could manage, then unclipped his foot and dropped sideways off Toothless’s back.

For a moment, he tumbled in the air, then he rolled onto his front and spread his arms. The air roared in his ears, pulled at his face, pressed in the centre of his chest like it was trying to fight him as he fell. If he laughed, or screamed, the fall carried it away over his shoulder once again.

Turning his head was an effort. Hiccup managed to wrench his head round to see Toothless in the air beside him, wings slightly flared to slow his fall, this time falling smoothly rather than going head-over-heels in the way that they had once.

It felt like forever, but might have only been a few seconds, before he reached out and grabbed Toothless’s saddle once again. Toothless turned, Hiccup pulled himself over, and somehow it was almost easy to just think about getting his foot back into the stirrup, clicking it into place, and opening up Toothless’s tail once again.

The air snapped around them. Hiccup felt the air driven from his lungs and a jolt up his spine as he slammed down into the saddle. He held on tightly, eyes streaming, as Toothless swept up again with a triumphant shriek, firing into the air to let purple-white flash across the clouds.

Stoick probably wasn’t going to be too impressed with this.

Hiccup was still laughing as he swooped down again, wide lazy circles that slowly bought them closer and closer to ground level. Somewhere during his fall, Astrid and Stormfly had landed, and she caught his eye and shook her head as Toothless landed softly in probably the only patch of snow that had not previously been trampled. She was smiling, though.

“That,” said Stonestrike Holsen, one of the oldest of the children watching wide-eyed as Hiccup tried to dismount without making a fool of himself and breaking the spell, “was _awesome_.”

His hands were shaking with the thrill of flying, and he was very grateful of being able to both draw his cane and put his other hand on Toothless’s back. “That,” he replied, “was being a dragon rider.”

Toothless rumbled, and turned to nudge against Hiccup’s hand. He could feel the huff of breath on his skin, warm and damp.

“We didn’t understand dragons,” he said, aware that he was talking to a rapt audience but not particularly thinking about it too hard just yet. “We still don’t, not fully. There’s still so much to learn. We’re just finding out how dragons live, what they like to eat, how they sleep. And maybe they’re finding out about us as well, learning that there’s more to humans than swords and axes and fighting.”

His heart was still pounding in his chest, and he could still taste the clouds when he breathed in. It had been weeks since he had even seen his sheet of tail positions and what they were supposed to do. It was just a matter of feeling it now.

“But flying, and riding, and just being beside a dragon...” he looked across at Toothless, letting his hand drift down until just his fingertips brushed against the tip of Toothless’s nose and made him snort. “It’s real. It’s the closest thing to being a dragon that we can know. To being someone, something else. To being able to fly yourself.”

It started to really sink in just how many people were looking at him expectantly or, in the case of a few of the children, with something worryingly close to awe. Hiccup caught himself and cleared his throat.

“So... any more questions?”

 

 

 

 

 

“So,” said Stoick, “how did today go?”

“I think it went all right,” said Hiccup, with a nonchalant sort of shrug. He was just preparing a blithe look when Astrid punched him on the arm on the way through.

“He was great,” she said, already continuing on to join her father.

All right, so perhaps it was worth it for the proud light in his father’s eyes and the smile on his face when he heard the words. There was still a smell of blood on the air beneath that of cooking meat, and Hiccup couldn’t help noticing that salt had managed to get into Stoick’s beard, but that was normal for Slaughter Day. Having Toothless at his side, looking hungrily at the roasting sheep in the centre of the Great Hall, was something entirely new, and having everyone seemingly happy to see him around was something pretty novel as well.

Stoick wrapped his arm around Hiccup’s shoulders and gave him enough of a squeeze to almost pull him over. “Ha! Of course you were. What did the children think of the dragons, then?”

“They’re pretty popular,” said Hiccup. It shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise, with how keen most children always were to see the final competition in the arena, and the killing of the Monstrous Nightmare, but somehow it had managed to be. It had turned out that the ‘Dragon Master’ game had not yet lost its draw either. “The hatchlings, of course. But they were all just...” he searched for a word for a moment. “Curious.”

“Well,” said Stoick, drawing out the word slightly. “That’s good, I suppose. And they learnt something today?”

“Definitely.” It came out in a rush, and Hiccup grinned again, just at the memory of how the children had smiled when he had showed them how to reach out their hand to the dragons, and how the dragons would come up and nudge their hands in turn. All right, so there had been some squealing and running away again, but not true _screaming_ , and not true fear. Catching sight of something further into the hall, Stoick started towards it, a hand between Hiccup’s shoulderblades to guide him in the same direction. “I mean, there might have been a bit too much emphasis on dragon poo, but it’s all interest, right? Wouldn’t it be amazing if other people started wanting to adopt dragons, as well?”

“That’s one word for it,” said Stoick, not looking around.

His words made Hiccup deflate slightly, but he would not want to wager on whether they were from disinterest or distrust. Some of the children had seemed truly enthusiastic about dragons, but Hiccup wasn’t sure that it was the best of ideas to leave dragon care to a child. Especially since any dragon now would be less used to humans than these first handful.

Perhaps getting Stoick to bond with a dragon would be a better start.

Hiccup was still turning the idea over in his head as Stoick led him to one of the tables nearest to the roasting meat, just a few feet over from Burplout and his family. For a moment he was not quite sure what he was supposed to do, but a hopeful smile seemed to work as Wartlout waved what looked like a rib in greeting.

“Where’s Elsa?” said Hiccup, catching himself before he slid onto the bench. He had thought that she had been not far behind him when they had escorted the children up to the Great Hall when the horn sounded.

“Helping Gobber claim some dinner.”

A statement which seemed to sum up most of the way that Elsa and Gobber interacted, really. Then again, food was always such a worry, so important. Perhaps now their food wasn’t disappearing down the Red Death’s gullet, things might get easier.

“I hope that doesn’t mean your doubting my skills,” said Gobber, all but on cue. He was balancing a worringly large platter across his hand and hook, and Hiccup leant out of the way as some of the meat juices dripped over the edge.

Stoick drew his knife and stabbed a slice of mutton. “Of course not.”

“Well, I think we can all agree that nobody in this family has any difficulty finding food,” said Hiccup. He saw Toothless licking his lips, hips shifting slightly, and put an arm over the Night Fury’s head before everything went chaotic.

Either Elsa didn’t get the comment or was very good at keeping a straight face, but Stoick gave Hiccup a slightly weary look. “Must you?”

“What?” His brain took a moment to catch up with the conversation. “No! That wasn’t a weight thing! It really wasn’t this time!”

“Uh-huh, sure,” said Gobber. “What’s that story about the boy who rings the dragon bell?”

“We don’t have a dragon bell. We have a horn,” said Hiccup.

Elsa frowned. “Dragon bell?”

“There’s this story,” said Hiccup quickly, hoping to fully derail the conversation before it returned to the hypothetical jokes about his father’s weight, “about a boy who was set to watch against dragon attacks, beside the bell which the village used to warn each other. So, it’s lonely and boring, because the dragons don’t attack all that often. Not like Berk used to be.” As Stoick shook his head and turned his attention back to the mutton, Hiccup relaxed a little. He had always preferred to be accused of things that he had actually done. “And so he rings the bell, and people come running out, but there are no dragons and the boy basically just wanted attention.

“Anyway, they tell him off, and he goes back to watching for dragons. But after maybe half a moon it starts to get unbearably boring again, so he rings the dragon bell, people come running, same thing again,” he gestured vaguely with one hand, finally thinking to draw his knife with the other and hope to actually get some food this evening. Elsa nodded along. “They tell him off, and this time he promises that he won’t ring the dragon bell unless dragons are attacking.

“Not long after that, a real attack happens, only a couple of dragons, but still. The boy rings the bell, but nobody comes because hey, it’s always a false alarm, no point getting everyone worried on a cold night. Only the dragons take the sheep and, in some versions of the story,” he added carefully, because it was a common variation even if it made him uncomfortable, “the boy as well.”

“It is a warning, for children,” said Elsa.

“Basically. Don’t lie, especially about important things. Hey bud,” he said, spotting a rib sticking out from the platter and pulling it out. Toothless murred softly. “Want to share?”

From the way that Toothless licked his lips, the answer was not too hard to guess. Hiccup stripped the meat off the bone, most of it coming off easily even if it got his hands messy. There was a little bit left at the end, and he cut it off with his knife. The Gronckle iron really did make a lot of things easier.

“Go on, then.” He held the bone out for Toothless. Normally they would crack bones for marrow, but for the Slaughter feast, at least, people didn’t worry so much about that. Toothless’s teeth slid into place, and he plucked the bone from Hiccup’s hand, tossing his head back and gulping it down with an appreciative rumble.

“You know, Nadders are always fans of the bones,” said Gobber. “Usually after the slaughter I’d be feeding bone to that Nadder for weeks.

Toothless tilted his chin upwards towards Hiccup, who obliged with a well-placed scratch. “Just Stormfly?”

“Eh, the others didn’t mind them, but they don’t go mad for them the way Nadders do.” Gobber, on the other hand, cracked open the rib that he was holding and sucked out the marrow inside. There were always those who liked it more. “Maybe it’s something to do with those spines. Got to be work, regrowing them.”

“Can we please not talk dragons at the dinner table?” said Stoick, with the same weary tone that he had used whenever the talk of blacksmithing had become too prolonged.

This time, Hiccup was pretty sure that Elsa was hiding a smile behind her hand.

 

 

 

 

 

After Slaughter Day, things got easier. The weather worsened, true, such that it was less and less often possible to actually go flying, but whenever there was a clear enough sky Hiccup made sure that he took advantage of it. The others usually joined him, but Toothless could fly faster and higher than the other dragons and before the end of their flight he would always pull away so that they could fly alone.

He wheedled his way into spending time at the forge again, whenever the weather was at its worst and when Gobber was grumbling about the amount of work people had asked him to do before Snoggletog. The amount of time that he spent humming, however, was a bit of a giveaway.

For the first time since the Red Death, some of their fishing boats, further out, caught sight of twos or threes of dragons. But there were no great flocks, not like before, and they seemed to pay no attention to the wary Berkians. It was progress, Hiccup was sure of it.

He was almost grateful when a particularly fierce storm had them inside all day, even if it meant Toothless hanging from the beams and grumbling in a manner that could only be called muted because it was coming from a dragon. It meant, at least, that he finally finished the blue glass beads on which he had been working, and couldn’t help being proud when they were finally strung into a necklace.

Glass wasn’t hugely uncommon around Berk, just took so much time to work that people did not tend to bother with it. Blue glass, though, was prized, and he was not in the least bit surprised when Treesprout held the necklace up to catch the weak midday sunlight as if she was not sure that it was real.

“Did you get this from Trader Johann?”

For a moment, Hiccup considered making a joke of it and claiming that it was a secret he could not divulge, but he shook his head. “Gathered it from on the island.”

“And you want fabric?” She waited for his nod, then put the necklace down on the table beside them. “Well, I’ll see what I’ve got.”

Not everyone on Berk could smith or keep the mill, or generally take on a job which was theirs and theirs alone. But people found places, farming or fishing or, in Treesprout’s case, always having the last fabric on Berk. She traded with Johann for it, took it in from those who produced more than necessary on their looms, and generally acquired it throughout the year. It made her pretty popular around Snoggletog, as well.

Hiccup waited while Treesprout dragged over a large wooden chest, knowing better than to try and interfere. She bought it alongside the table and hauled it open, kneeling down to search through.

“Not much left by now,” she said. “Though I do have this still.”

She drew out a large piece of fabric, folded over and back on itself. It was a deep sea-green, almost bluish where the folds put shadows into it, and an unusual colour to see on Berk.

“I was trying to get a blue,” said Treesprout ruefully, laying it on the table. “Didn’t quite work out. Neither fish nor fowl, that one.”

Greens were common colours on Berk, when it came to clothing, but blue was all but unheard of. Astrid owned a green-blue shirt, which Hiccup supposed was probably from another of Treesprout’s attempts to get a decent colour. Woad refused to take to the soil in Berk, and didn’t manage to survive the journey there without becoming, apparently, all but useless.

Most people were not a fan of the intermediate results. But it was a good length of fabric, almost certainly enough for a tunic or maybe even a long skirt if cut well. “It’s perfect,” said Hiccup.

Treesprout smiled. She had white in her dark hair, and a scar cut down the left side of her forehead, but there was a warmth about her despite the scars and burns on her arms from her dragon-fighting days. “I’ve got a stretch of black wool, as well,” she said.

“Oh,” Hiccup held up his hand. “That’s really not necessary. I mean, this fabric,” he waved to the sea green wool, “is great! Really.”

“I was on Dragon Island,” said Treesprout flatly, and Hiccup felt something turn over in his stomach. She pulled a roll of black wool from the bottom of the chest, and put it firmly on top of the green. “And that wildling girl saved my life. Elise, was it?”

“Elsa,” murmured Hiccup.

“Elsa, then. She cut down one of those Red Death hatchlings right as it gave me this,” she added, gesturing to a particularly livid burn-scar on her left forearm and wrist. It was still shiny and tight, even after all this time. “Would have done more if she hadn’t been there. And I’m guessing this is for her, right?”

Hiccup smiled sheepishly. “Snoggletog clothes,” he said.

Treesprout nodded, and gave a very slight, soft smile. “Well, then. Give her the green from you, and the black from me, if you wish. But give her my thanks, as well.”

“I will.” It still amazed him, in a way, and he wished that Elsa could see moments like this, when people thought of her as one of their own. She had stuck so close to him since her bracelets had been lost on Dragon Island, and though she had tried to make more from what remained of the trollwort net, it seemed to have lost its power. Gone dry, perhaps.

With the fabric lashed together with twine and tucked securely under his arm, he made his way home once again with a grin on his face.

Toothless and Elsa were both in when he got back, shaking the first flakes of snow out of his hair. Toothless had apparently decided that he would rather sit with his nose in the fire, and since it didn’t seem to harm him or the fire in any way, Hiccup was happy to let him do it as long as Stoick didn’t see. Somehow he didn’t think that his father would take too well to that particular eccentricity.

“Hey!” said Hiccup, closing the door against the snow and shaking the water off his left foot. “Looks like you’ve found the sensible place to be. Where’s my father gone?”

“Chiefing,” said Elsa primly. Hiccup choked back a laugh and made a mental note to talk about the difference between in-house and out-of-house language. Not right this minute, though.

“Yeah,” he said instead, putting the fabric on the table. “There’s plenty of that to go around.” Seeing to it that food was stored for winter was always an important part of Stoick’s work, it was perhaps less than surprising that he was in great demand just after the slaughter.

“You are looking for him?”

“Nope,” said Hiccup. It came out a little more proud than he had intended, and Elsa cocked her head to the side and looked at him curiously. He cleared his throat. “Just... asking. I was looking for you, actually. For this.” He patted the fabric at his side.

Putting down the knife and setting aside what looked like neck to be cut into chunks for stew, Elsa washed off her hands in the bucket of water set up at the end of the table. “Wool? What is it for?”

He nearly made the flippant response that it was for clothes, but caught himself just in time. “It’s for you,” he said. Elsa swayed back half a step where she stood, looking at the fabric then up to Hiccup in what he could only call amazement. She curled her hands to her chest, water freezing into fine sheets of ice that cracked and fell to the floor. She didn’t seem to notice. “It’s a Snoggletog thing,” he added, reaching for words that might stop her from looking so astonished, that might counteract the gleam in her eyes that looked horribly like fear. “New clothes. Dad and Gobber will probably have something for me, and each other. And then people wear them on the final day of the celebration.”

Still glancing up to Hiccup every few seconds, as if asking for permission, Elsa edged closer to the fabric and ran her fingers over the edge of it. Hiccup held his breath for a moment, not sure that ice was not going to spread across it, but the black wool remained unblemished.

Elsa swallowed, and her voice shook when she spoke. “You are sure? You do not want to keep it?”

“No, it’s for you,” he said. He nudged the fabric towards her slightly. “I’m sorry that it’s just fabric, not a dress already. But you probably wouldn’t want to see what I do when I try to make clothes. It’d have three sleeves or something.”

“You did make Toothless’s saddle,” said Elsa, but her voice wasn’t quite strong enough to be called teasing.

“That’s leather. And I only had to sit on it, not wear it.”

It probably shouldn’t have made as much of a difference as it did, but somehow Hiccup could handle leather with no problems, and yet baulk at any fabric more complicated than Toothless’s tail. He tried to keep up a smile, but it was only growing more difficult as Elsa carefully folded back the black wool to look at the sea-green beneath. “I cannot accept this,” she said finally.

Apparently it had only taken a few moons for her to become more adept in polite refusals than most of Berk. “It’s a present,” he said. “You don’t _have_ to but, I mean...” he waved vaguely. “I’d like if you did.” He reached over and took Elsa’s hand; she flinched slightly, but did not pull away altogether. “What is it? What am I missing?”

Her brows drew together slightly, and he saw the twitch of a muscle in her jaw for a moment even as her eyes fell to the fabric and remained there. “In the Wildling village, there was a loom,” she said. “But usually they took clothes from Arendelle. They were passed from person to person. I was only a child. Only small.”

Hiccup nodded. Hand-me-downs were common enough around Berk as well, especially among larger families. There was no point wasting good fabric.

“Then, I was alone,” said Elsa, with a small shrug. “I took clothes.”

It took a moment to sink in, and Hiccup almost let Elsa’s hand slip out of his. “You haven’t had any new clothes in a long time, have you?”

The way that she glanced up at him was enough.

“Since... Arendelle?” he hazarded.

“When I was a child,” she said. She sighed, and her voice softened. “My sister wanted to wear my clothes, when I got too tall for them. But she was not allowed.”

That was strange. Hiccup did not know too much about Arendelle, but they were not all that far south of Berk and he could not imagine that life was really as much easier as they sometimes liked to pretend. Put on a good show for the Vikings when they visited for one day in every three years. “Who did they give your clothes to, then?”

Elsa shrugged. “I do not know. I did not see them afterwards.”

“Well,” said Hiccup carefully, guiding her hand back down to rest on the fabric again. “I know that you have to make it yourself, but... maybe it’s a start?”

Elsa’s hand shook, then she pulled it free of Hiccup’s hold. For a moment, he feared that she was going to flee, but the next thing that he knew she had flung her arms around his neck and was clinging to him as tight as he could ever remember him doing so. She was cold, but not as much as he had known her to be before, and though she buried her face in his shoulder he was fairly sure that she was not actually crying.

He patted Elsa on the back carefully. He was sure that when they first met, she had been taller than him, but whether or not it was the way that they were standing it did not seem so noticeable any more.

“ _Ei tiikos_ ,” she was murmuring in his ear, and that much Marulosen he could definitely remember. “ _Ei tiikos paal_.”

“You’re welcome.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this chapter actually has quite a long conversation in a conlang. It's written out in the language, because that's what Hiccup hears - but if you want the translation, it is available in mouseover text (hold your mouse over the sentence, and it will translate) or in the end notes.
> 
> For linguistic nerdery, there is [a supplementary](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7246333) set of notes available.

When Hiccup woke up in the middle of the night once again, to the sound of the horn blaring long, then short, then long, then short again, his first instinct was to groan and roll over to bury his face in his pillow. “Oh, come _on_ ,” he growled. “Really?”

He lifted his head in time to see someone stirring up the fire and opening the lanterns downstairs, faint light filtering up to his room as well. Groaning, Hiccup swung himself to a seated position, and was just reaching for his foot as Toothless rumbled and shifted in the darkness. He peeled back one wing to reveal Elsa, pale against his side. She had been sleeping there more since the attack from Alvin, and Hiccup could not fault her at all. Some nights he was tempted to crawl under a wing himself.

“What is it?” said Elsa.

“Wildlings,” said Hiccup, buckling up his leg. The word came out without thinking, and only at Elsa’s harsh intake of breath did he look round. “I mean...”

“I remember,” she said. “I heard it... before.”

“ _Always_ after Slaughter Day,” said Hiccup. He squirmed over to his clothes-chest and fished around for something that felt like a pair of leggings, pulling them on and shivering at the draft of cold air that got beneath the blankets as he did so. “Every year, between Slaughter Day and Snoggletog, we get–”

“A wildling attack,” Elsa said flatly. “They know that you have a lot of food at this time of year. They send a small group to camp nearby and attack. From Kiirkylla.”

The Wildling village. Wildlings were wildlings, to Berkians, but Hiccup had heard enough to know that was not quite the case out in the Wildlands themselves. He probably should have thought about that with Snoggletog coming up, but there had been so many other things going on that he had honestly forgotten about it. Hopefully by next year he could make a change to this as well.

“You know about these?” he waved vaguely towards the door, where shouts could already be heard between the blasts of the horn. He barely waited for Elsa’s nod before getting to his feet, grabbing for a heavy tunic to pull on over his nightshirt. “You need to talk to my father then. Do you know how many of them there are? Where they’ll be?”

“No,” said Elsa. She was still sitting beside Toothless, one hand on the ground and the other arm wrapped across her, as Hiccup walked over and offered a hand to help her up. “I was too young to know much. I just knew that they came here each winter.”

“That’s still a good start,” he said. At a slight wave, Toothless stood up and rustled his wings, dislodging Elsa slightly. Hiccup made the offer of his hand just a little more pointed. “Come on. I think we’ll need you out there.”

“I am not sure how much help I could be,” said Elsa.

“Never know until we try,” Hiccup replied. If, of course, he was going to be let out of the house considering what had happened on the last few occasions that there had been attacks of any variety. He crossed to the staircase and leant down just in time to see his father appearing from the back room, axe in hand and straightening his helmet. “Dad!”

“Aren’t you a right pair?” called Gobber. Stoick looked round and then up, frowning, and it occurred to Hiccup that Toothless was leaning over the bannister in just the same manner.

“This time,” said Stoick, pointing a finger, “Gobber is staying with you.”

It was now or never, Hiccup supposed. “The raid is from the wildling village. They do it every year. Elsa knows a little about it.”

“Information that would have been grand a week ago,” said Stoick, but there was not the worst of his bite in it. When Hiccup did not draw away from the bannister, Stoick sighed, lowering and turning aside the axe and knocking at the frame of the door to what was supposed to be Elsa’s room. “Elsa? I don’t doubt you’re up.”

Hiccup cleared his throat awkwardly and glanced round. Elsa had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and he had no doubt that it was for some modesty rather than anything to do with the cold air. Or perhaps just to do with the way that Stoick frowned again when Elsa appeared on the stairs as well. Hiccup hoped that would wait for later.

“Do you know where they’ll be going?” he said to Elsa.

“They come for the meat,” she said. “The fish. Now it is dried, it is easier to carry. And it is harder to find inland.”

Stoick and Gobber exchanged a glance, which Hiccup could read well enough to say that this was not exactly new information. He was just about ready to give up and hide in his room again when Elsa leant forward, gripping the bannister and speaking more quickly.

“Fires. At times, they would use fires as a distraction. I saw it once, when they went to Arendelle in the summer. At the most...” she paused for a moment, lips shaping a word. “Obvious place. Then attack another.”

“The well’s frozen this time of year,” said Gobber.

Stoick nodded. “See to it. I’ll get the defences seen to. With any luck, we’ll catch one in the act this time.”

“So,” said Hiccup, as his father started towards the door, “does this mean I’m not being guarded this evening?”

“You’re going with Gobber!”

It was more than clear enough that the words were final. Hiccup sighed, and started downstairs, hearing Toothless behind him and supposing that Elsa was following as well. By the time that he reached the floor, Gobber was lashing on his hook, and eyed them both.

“You know,” he said, conversationally despite the blasts of the horn that interrupted him. “It might help a little if you weren’t in your nightclothes.”

Hiccup looked down at himself before remembering that it probably wasn’t him to whom Gobber was talking. Eyes lowered, Elsa stepped behind Hiccup and ducked into her room, curtain softly closing behind her. He was about ready to give Gobber an apologetic look when he realised that the man was suppressing a smile, and his goodwill faded.

“Don’t say it,” said Hiccup instead.

“I recall Stoick talking about a similar conversation well over a moon ago.”

Feeling heat in his cheeks, Hiccup bit the inside of his lip and did his best to look composed. The effect was not much helped by Toothless, who chose this moment to plunk down, lift one leg in the air and lean with an air of determination towards his genitals. Hiccup reached over and put a hand on Toothless’s face before this could look any more ridiculous.

“Nobody minds either of you sharing a room with the dragon, Hiccup. It’s when you share a room with each other that the problem comes.”

“We’re not sharing–” he cut off his protests as Elsa emerged from her room again, already clad in a long-sleeved top and a heavy skirt that fell to calf level. It was longer than most women in Berk would wear, though to be fair it was not as long as Stoick’s tunic. The boots battle had ended in a compromise, and lighter leather shoes which she rarely wore indoors anyway. The Gronckle iron knife was at her belt again.

“All ready?” said Gobber immediately. He waited for Elsa’s nod, not looking at Hiccup’s exasperated stare, before crossing and pulling open the door. “Right, then. Let’s check the well.”

It was far from uncommon for the well to freeze in winter, and the pragmatic solution had been simply to pile up some hefty rocks beside it and drop them down to break the surface. Only once or twice could Hiccup remember the ice being so thick that someone had needed to go down and set a fire to melt through.

As they headed outside, he could not help thinking that the Wildlings had chosen a good night for it. It was not snowing, but the moon was the smallest of crescents and a mist had pervaded the village. Through he could see the shapes of houses and the distant fires outside the Great Hall, everyone other than Gobber and Elsa was just a silhouette unless they ran straight past.

He dodged out of the way of Phlegma and her eldest daughter Melana, both with axes in hand and determined expressions as they headed towards the storehouse. It left him a few paces behind Gobber and Elsa, and with a vaguely formed curse he pushed harder to catch up with them. At least, when he glanced over his shoulder, Toothless was beside him and giving him a curious look in return.

“It’s all right, bud,” he said.

Gobber chucked a small stone down the well and leant over after it, cupping his hand around his ear. What he could actually hear over the continuing horn, Hiccup had no idea, but Gobber drew back and shook his head again.

“Nope. Frozen solid. All right, then, let’s see...”

Waggling his fingers, he reached for one of the larger rocks, but Hiccup stepped over and put his hand over Gobber’s arm. “No! What about Toothless?”

Gobber glanced from dragon to boy. “What about him?”

The pause was enough. Hiccup patted the edge of the well, and Toothless hopped up to place his forepaws on it, tail flicking curiously as he leant over and looked down into the well. “A full blast would be too much, I know,” he said quickly, “But Toothless can hold back. Just enough to crack the ice. At least let us give it a go?”

Meatlug would probably have been the better choice, if Hiccup were totally honest, able to chew up a few rocks and then fire the molten remains down to melt through the ice rather than shattering it as Toothless’s powerful blasts were likely to do. Even his gentler blasts could shatter small stones. But Gobber had not actually seen that in action, and mercifully he nodded now, crossing his arms and actually looking cautiously interested.

Taking a deep breath, Hiccup ran his hand over Toothless’s forehead, skimming over his plates to settle between his shoulderblades. “Just a little bit, bud,” he said quietly, the sound pretty much lost beneath the horn. _Surely_ they didn’t have to keep blowing that thing still. “Just enough.”

Toothless shifted his paws slightly, then Hiccup heard the whine building in his throat before he fired down into the well, the light like a flash of lightning in the darkness. There was a cracking sound below them, and Hiccup leant over, flicking another small stone down and just about hearing the splash that it made.

Elation bubbled through him. Another thing that dragons could do for them, another thing that people could not have dreamt of before. But this was not the time, and he quashed it swiftly as the horn finally stopped, only for the redness of fire to lick through the fog.

“Fire at the Great Hall!” somebody shouted, nothing more than a voice through the fog. With a mutter that definitely included Freya’s name, Gobber started readying the buckets, and Hiccup was about to join him when he felt Elsa take hold of his cape.

Frost crackled around her fingers, and she gave it a frightened glance before turning back to Hiccup. “The stores,” she said. “The fire is only–”

“A distraction. Gobber, you and Elsa should head to the stores,” he said, Gobber giving him a look of surprise. “I can handle here.”

“No,” said Elsa quickly. She withdrew her hand from Hiccup’s cape, but the frost remained even as she twisted her hands together. “I should stay here and help.”

Gobber looked between them, then up at the fire, and pursed his lips for a moment before nodding. “All right. I’ll grab someone in passing. You two help the others with the fire.”

Then he was gone, and all that they could do was set to work.

 

 

 

 

 

The fire was not particularly powerful, with wood too damp and too little to really do damage to a building that had withstood dragon attacks, but it had drawn people’s attention. Hiccup did his best to sound as if he was in control while organising the bucket chains and ordering people to the great water barrels that _might_ not have frozen yet, and eventually had to put his cane aside and use both hands to work. It made him feel a little unsteady, but was bearable.

It was still dark, still foggy, by the time that the fire was extinguished, but at least exercise meant that he did not actually feel as cold as he had done beforehand.

Gobber loomed out of the fog so suddenly that Hiccup jumped. The older man was out of breath, but grinning almost maniacally.

“We got one!” he said.

“What?” Hiccup took a few seconds to stare at Gobber stupidly before his brain managed to catch up. “A wildling?”

“No, you muttonhead, a Green Death.” Gobber rolled his eyes. “Of course a wildling! Found them trying to open up the stores, and one lost his footing when they tried to run!”

It was on the tip of Hiccup’s tongue to say how great it was to have caught one, in the way that he had always congratulated whoever had managed such a feat before. It had been Elsa who had warned them that the fires were distraction rather than destruction, though, and with the first thought of Elsa came the second, more treacherous, about whether it was such a good thing at all that they had captured someone as well as saving their food supplies. What Elsa had said about wildlings had made it very clear, at least to Hiccup, that they were just ordinary people dealing with different circumstances in a different way. That wildlings were not as uniform as Berk had once thought.

“Are they all right?” he said instead. He meant _still alive_ , but could not bring himself to ask so bluntly. All too often, wildlings were not even permitted an execution, just killed where they were seen.

“Aye,” said Gobber, frowning slightly. “What are you thinking?”

Hiccup swallowed. “I know some of their language now,” he said. “Maybe I can talk to them.”

“They’re no Elsa – and I mean that as no insult to you,” he added, with a nod towards Elsa herself. She did not say anything, looking reluctant to even meet Gobber’s eyes, but Hiccup knew that this was not something that he could drop now. “And how much do you even speak of their language, Hiccup?”

Not enough, he knew. He had been hoping that Elsa would look less frightened of the prospect, perhaps even interested in meeting another wildling after so long among only Berkians. Whatever had happened, he had been sure that she must feel that she had something in common with them still. A way of life that Hiccup had never experienced.

“Elsa?” he said, as quietly as he dared with the noise still around them. “Would you translate for us? This is something that we’ve never had the chance to do before.” When she did not refuse immediately, he quickly added: “You can think about it. It doesn’t need to be now.”

“I’ll talk to Stoick,” said Gobber. “See what we can do. The jail is back in a usable shape again, we can put him there for the time being and put a guard on him.”

“Anything lost?” Hiccup asked, a little too aware of just how belated it was to be asking.

Luckily, Gobber chuckled. “No. We got there in time. Thanks to the two of you.”

Hiccup wasn’t sure whether or not he should feel proud of that, but nodded in something that probably looked like gratitude and waited until Gobber had turned away before turning to Elsa. “You want to talk about this?”

“Not particularly,” she said, words crisp but not angry. Just a little too well-formed. “Hiccup, I do not think that I can do this.”

“I do know some. I can try to talk to him. Maybe he will learn some of our words. But it will be a lot harder,” said Hiccup. “We’ve never been able to talk to someone from the Wildlands before you. And you’ve said that you’re not a typical wildling. If this man is from the village, maybe we could learn something more from him. Help him. I’m not out to hurt anyone, Elsa, I’m really not.”

“I know,” said Elsa, voice and expression both softening slightly. She sighed as she met Hiccup’s eyes, slight lines appearing between her brows. “I know you are not. But this is complicated.”

“Then tell me about wildlings. Us,” he corrected himself. “Me and my Dad. We should at least know what we’re dealing with here.”

“I do not know much about them,” said Elsa warningly, but Hiccup could not help feeling optimistic just from the fact that she was considering the idea at all. “It might not be of help.”

“ _Anything_ might help.”

Finally, she nodded. Hiccup reached out to take her hands, but she wrapped them around her waist and turned away just a little. He settled for resting a hand on Toothless’s shoulder, feeling as much as hearing the rumble which he earnt in response. “Thank you,” he said, all the same. It was the least that he could do.

 

 

 

 

 

Stoick was waiting when they got back to the house, frown already firmly in place. Hiccup didn’t even try to act surprised, though he did notice that Elsa drew closer to him as they came near. It was starting to snow again, Berk’s usual winter weather refusing to let up, and Hiccup had to brush snow out of his face as he reached his father.

“We caught one,” said Stoick, without prompting. “Up by the stores. If he speaks a word of Northur, he isn’t showing it.”

But they hadn’t killed him, which was a start. “Gobber said that you took him to the jail,” said Hiccup.

“Aye.” Stoick looked straight to Elsa, with enough of the Chief about him that Hiccup winced slightly. Hands on hips, jaw set. “Will you help us talk to him?”

His voice, as well, was very much that of the Chief. Hiccup looked over at Elsa warily, but she did not draw away in the manner that he half-expected her to. Though she looked faintly troubled, the slightest of frowns on her face and her hands clasped together, it was not outright fear. “You know that most people from Maruloet, they are not like me.”

“No,” said Stoick. His voice softened just slightly as he continued. “And they don’t speak Northur, and none of us has ever been able to learn their language.”

Elsa’s language as well, Hiccup wanted to add, but he had a sense that this was very much not about him. He reached out to rest his hand on the back of Toothless’s neck instead, high enough up that he could feel the plates brushing against the back of his wrist.

“What do you want to know from him?” said Elsa.

“It’s not just getting information from him,” Stoick replied. “Captive or not, I want to tell him that if he will talk to us, we are willing to make peace. With him, and with others if necessary. That we would rather talk than fight.”

Elsa’s eyes seemed very hard just for a moment, though her tone of voice did not change. “Are you going to kill him?”

It made Stoick pause, just for a moment. “Not if we don’t have to,” he replied.

Most likely she had heard the hunt that had been made for her, Hiccup realised. Even if she had not been able to understand the words, the fact that people had been after her blood would have been enough. But hearing Elsa speak had seemed to stop any number of people in their tracks – after generations of hearing incomprehensible sounds from Wildlings, finally there was one that spoke like a _human_. It wasn’t possible, without listening closely, to hear that the sounds of the Wildling language were rather like those of Arendellen. And very few people spoke any of that.

He could almost see Elsa brace herself. “Yes,” she said, voice heavy. “I will.”

Stoick’s sigh of relief was entirely visible as he heard the words. He lifted one hand as if he was about to pat Elsa on the shoulder, then caught himself. “Very well. Gobber, if you stay here with Hiccup and Toothless–”

“I want Hiccup with me,” said Elsa, at the same moment as Hiccup said: “I’m coming with you.”

Stoick looked between the two of them and shook his head. “Fine,” he said, in a voice that sounded more like father than chief. “Gobber, if you stay here with Toothless – last thing we need is dragons visible through the jail window – then we’ll go now. I don’t want to give him too much time to cool off.”

Probably not the best choice of words, but mercifully Elsa either did not recognise the idiom or was ignoring it as she stepped aside to let Stoick back through again. When Hiccup caught her eye, he smiled, and she smiled back even if it was a little thin. Her hands shook for a moment before she tightened one around the wrist of the other.

“If you want this to stop, just say so,” he said quickly, before his father could turn and stop them. Elsa nodded, and stepped aside to let Toothless and Gobber make their way into the house instead.

The snow grew heavier as they made their way towards the jail, though at least the fog was thinning somewhat. There was a whisper in Hiccup’s mind that Elsa’s powers might have something to do with it, unchecked by trollwort, but rather more of him did not care either way. It was not as if this weather was in any way unusual for Berk, after all.

Spitelout was standing watch outside the jail as they drew closer, hunched down into his fur cloak and scowling. He straightened up a little as Stoick approached, and stepped closer before they got to the door. “Brynnhild is with Pinebolt and my brother. Duskshowl is with them.”

“For sure, this time?” said Stoick. Spitelout nodded. “Go and keep an eye on Adelaide and Wartlout, then. We’ll handle this.”

Though Spitelout did not say anything, there was something slightly dubious about his expression as he looked past Stoick to Hiccup and Elsa. Hiccup would admit that they perhaps did not look like the most impressive pair to be taken against a Wildling. With a nod that dislodged snow from his helmet, however, Spitelout beat a hasty retreat from the jail.

Stoick opened the door and ushered them both inside. A torch had been lit, though it did not do much against the darkness and the cloying fog. Hiccup held the door open for Elsa, and closed it quietly behind them, watching for any change in her expression. She looked surprisingly calm, though she might have been a little paler even than usual.

The man was huddled to the rear of the cell, not even on the bench but in the far corner. He wore leather and furs, and even in the firelight they looked shabby. But his beard was trimmed neat and close to his skin, and when he looked up there was a set to his jaw and determination in his eyes.

“Go on,” said Stoick softly. Elsa glanced to him for a moment, then stepped up to the bars and cleared her throat.

“ _Heiva_ ,” she said. Surprise flashed across the man’s face, before he hid it again. “ _Iil paakutii Marulosen_?”

Hiccup recognised the name of the language and the tone of a question, and from the way that the man tried hard not to react he could tell that yes, he spoke the same language that Elsa had.

“ _Aan tiisaatoskohesa_ ,” she said, as the man continued to frown at her. Beyond the negative at the beginning, that was far beyond what Hiccup could understand, and he was relieved as Elsa looked across to them both. “I am saying that we will not hurt him." She turned back to the man. “ _Avat maanetiisen_?”

“ _Avat maanetii_ sen?” growled the man. The accusation in his tone was unmistakable, and Stoick was on the verge of stepping forwards when Elsa spoke.

“ _Maaneumasen_ Anna,” said Elsa. “ _Iil am tii_?”

Somehow, Hiccup doubted that the man had been asking after Elsa’s sister’s name. Later, perhaps, he would ask her why she felt as if she needed to give a false one.

“Albrekt.”

“ _Aan tiisaatoskomee,_ Albrekt,” Elsa said again.

“I’m guessing that’s his name,” said Stoick. Hiccup knew his father well enough to detect the touch of discomfort in his voice, but it would probably not be too apparent to anyone else. Perhaps not even Elsa, as she kept her gaze on the man and her voice steady.

“ _Iil esuaatii Kiirkyllailt? Iil sahen aarint_?”

The man – Albrekt, Hiccup reminded himself – frowned and slowly got to his feet. “ _Sahen paajonint; aan sahen aarint. Aan esuaatii Kiirkyllailt_.”

“ _Ekan, esuaatoluma Kiirkyllailt_ ,” said Elsa quickly, and though Hiccup was by now entirely lost he could hear the edge to Elsa’s voice. Her hand clenched at her side, and ice formed on her cuff, but then she slowly uncurled her fingers again and it stopped spreading. “ _In, esuaama Berkilt_.”

Albrekt's lip curled slightly, as if in disdain.

“ _Aan Berk taanokaajentolhen_ ,” she added, more insistently. Hiccup really needed to learn to speak Marulosen. His hand tightened around the head of his cane until he felt as if it might leave bruises on his fingers, but the worst part of it was feeling so unable to help while Elsa was speaking to this stranger for them. This moment should have been important, momentous even, but it was all going on while he and his father watched without being able to understand more than a stray word.

“ _Siitap,_ ” said Albrekt, more slowly. “ _Imeatuntii_.”

“ _Otak_.” There was sadness in Elsa’s tone, and the man was not looking at her so aggressively now. Something a little more like understanding hung in the air between them. “ _Iil tiinokuatatooloshesa_?”

“ _Avat Berk ekyaadiit meenosuulav?_ ”

Silence hung in the air, and Elsa glanced round to Stoick once again. “Well?” he said.

“He asks, how can Berk help,” said Elsa, though her tone had a lot less bitterness in it than the man’s had done. “He comes from the village, and he knows that some of the Wildlings are banished from Arendelle. He was surprised that I knew as well.”

“If they’re hungry enough to be stealing food, then we can start with a good meal and a blanket for the night,” said Stoick, looking back to the man. Albrekt looked Stoick up and down, and barely spared a glance for Hiccup before turning his attention back to Elsa once again. When Elsa hesitated, Stoick nodded encouragingly. “Go on, tell him.”

“ _Tiinorukaatonodhen_ ,” said Elsa. Albrekt was still frowning. “ _Saiit miiv. Am tiinonaatonodhen huttiapnoan_.”

At that, the corner of the man’s mouth twitched as if he was about to smile, but then it was gone again. “ _Ei tiikos_ ,” he said.

“Hiccup,” said Stoick, catching him and jolting him from his thoughts. “Go and get someone to fetch them for him. Perhaps our guest will be more comfortable speaking to two people than to three.”

And while Hiccup might not have been the most imposing person in the room, he was the only one who was not actually necessary right now. He glanced at Elsa, who gave a very slight nod, and supposed that things had turned out nowhere near as bad as he feared.

 

 

 

 

 

Though the snow was still deepening outside, the wind was not too bad, and Hiccup would barely have called it a storm compared to some years. The worst of them would probably come after Snoggletog, as spring started to close in and the weather became less predictable. But nobody lived in Berk without picking up the sense to stay inside when storms closed in, and with the fire at the Great Hall put out there would not be much reason for anyone more than necessary to be outside.

Rather than go knocking on doors, he went straight home, shouldering open the door to find Toothless tucking into a basket of fish and Gobber sitting with his foot up by the fire and sketching something out on one of the slates.

“Trouble?” he said, as Hiccup pushed the door closed. At the same time, Toothless looked up, chirruped, and bounded over to headbutt Hiccup in the chest. It bumped him back against the door and nearly knocked the wind out of him, but was always worth it.

Hiccup huffed a laugh and scratched Toothless under the chin before gently pushing him away again. “No,” he managed finally. “He’s talking to Elsa. Dad reckons that a warm meal and a blanket might be a good start to making him a bit more friendly.”

“Well, that’s probably true for a lot of folks,” said Gobber. He waved towards the cauldron sitting by the fire. “Help yourself.”

He almost went to make a joke about making the one-legged boy do all of the work, but that wasn’t exactly going to help much when he was talking to Gobber. With a roll of his eyes, Hiccup started with the chest of blankets tucked beneath the stairs, dragging one out and placing it on the table where it might hopefully warm up a little by the time that he had food as well. They had plenty of pots with lids, and he filled one as close to the brim as he dared, grabbing a loaf of bread from the pantry on the way through. It was going a bit stale now, but even on Berk they didn’t really care until you could break your teeth on it. Elsa had been even less concerned.

Getting everything back out of the door with him was a little more difficult, but he finally managed to wrap the blanket around the bread, stuff the resulting bundle under his armpit, and hold the pot up against his chest with his spare hand as he used the cane to help wrestle the door open. Toothless sticking a paw in might have helped, as well.

“Thanks, bud,” said Hiccup, slipping out sideways. He raised his voice. “More than I can say for some!”

Gobber waved a hook at him without looking round, and Hiccup couldn’t help grinning as he made his way back down towards the jail. Maybe this could actually _work_.

Stoick and Elsa were both waiting outside the jail by the time that he returned, and Stoick immediately removed everything from Hiccup’s arms. “I’ll deal with those.” As he claimed the blanket, the loaf of bread tumbled from one end, and Hiccup was about to launch himself after it when Elsa caught instead, just before it hit the snow. Stoick looked at the bread, then at Hiccup, and shook his head.

“It’s nearly Snoggletog,” said Hiccup, as if that was some sort of explanation.

Refusing to dignify that with an answer, Stoick nudged open the door of the jail again and disappeared inside, not holding the door open for either of them to follow. Hiccup frowned. “Is everything all right in there?”

He was relieved when Elsa nodded. “He spoke to me some more. He is not from Arendelle, but his mother was. She was... like Gothi, a little?” Not entirely sure what his mental image was supposed to be, Hiccup frowned. “She used plants to heal.”

“A... healer?” He wasn’t sure that he was understanding her correctly.

“The Silver Priests had her banished for... _inotuusan_ is the word in Maruloet. It is not quite magic, not like...” for a moment, her voice faltered. “Not like what I can do. There are different words for magic there.”

“What Gothi does isn’t magic.”

Elsa sighed. It still struck him sometimes, at strange moments, how her breath did not mist in the air like his or anyone else’s. “I know. But the Silver Priests do not like it. They say it is not what their _Deulan_ want.”

 _Deulan_ was Arendellen, through and through, and Hiccup remembered even as a child that he was not supposed to talk about Viking gods at all, and certainly not to say anything about the four gods that the Silver Priests had bought to Arendelle. And if it had been important enough for Stoick to impress it upon Hiccup when he was six years old... well, perhaps that was something that they should have seen a little earlier.

“Round here, the gods don’t mind too much as long as they get thanked for what they do for us,” said Hiccup. That did include healing, but it was well enough understood that not only should people be thankful for the healing, but for the help from Gothi or anyone else that allowed that healing to happen. “So he’s been his whole life in the Wildlands?”

“Yes,” said Elsa. There was tension in her shoulders that had not been there when Hiccup had left the jail, tightness around her eyes again. “In the Village. It may be that he,” she swallowed, “he remembers me. From before.”

“It’s been seven years since you were in the village!” Hiccup blurted. “You really think he could recognise you?”

“If I gave my name, perhaps,” she said. Well, that explained one thing, at least. Reaching up, Elsa curled her fingers into the end of her braid and tugged it over her shoulder. “Looking like this, it is not very common.”

That was certainly true, Hiccup had to admit. He thought he might have seen it before in Arendelle, though, perhaps in nothing more than passing. But it could hardly be common, and combined with a name that had been popular for relatively few years between the birth and the disappearance of the Crown Princess it probably would have been a problem. Especially with something like magic to have made her more memorable still.

“Well, he didn’t seem to say anything?” said Hiccup, not meaning for it to be quite as much of a question as it ended up becoming. Without letting it linger, he made himself go on. “So it’s fine. We can teach him some Northur. Maybe actually learn some Marulosen at last,” he added, self-deprecatingly enough for Elsa to crack a slight smile. “You learnt. And you didn’t even have someone to translate for you.” Even if her memory was like nothing that Hiccup had quite seen before, and Albrekt was probably not going to be able to learn quite so fast, it felt possible. Doable. “Perhaps this can be our first step to, well, another peace.”

Wildlings had to be easier to communicate with than dragons, after all. However much Hiccup worked at understanding Toothless, it didn’t stop them from occasionally looking confusedly at each other.

“Perhaps,” said Elsa softly. When Hiccup reached out to rest his hand on her shoulder, she didn’t flinch. He’d take that for a sign of optimism for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elsa: Hello. Do you speak Marulosen?  
> Elsa: They will not hurt you. What is your name?
> 
> Albrekt: What is _your_ name?
> 
> Elsa: My name is Anna. And you?
> 
> Albrekt: Albrekt.
> 
> Elsa: We are not going to hurt you, Albrekt.
> 
> (Stoick: I'm guessing that's his name.)
> 
> Elsa: Are you from the Village? In the east?
> 
> Albrekt: It's in the north, not the east. You aren't from the Village.
> 
> Elsa: Once, I was from the Village. Now, I am from Berk.  
> Elsa: Berk did not banish you.
> 
> Albrekt: So, you know.
> 
> Elsa: Of course. Will you let them help you?
> 
> Albrekt: What can Berk do to help?
> 
> (Elsa: He asks, how can Berk help. He comes from the village, and he knows that some of the Wildlings are banished from Arendelle. He was surprised that I knew as well.  
> Stoick: If they’re hungry enough to be stealing food, then we can start with a good meal and a blanket for the night. Go on, tell him.)
> 
> Elsa: They can give you food. It's good. And they can give you blankets.
> 
> Albrekt: Thank you.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNINGS in the end notes, as they contain spoilers for this chapter.
> 
> Content warning deals with violence/death-related content, please consider checking it if you have triggers or squicks.
> 
> Because no, I can't be trusted with nice things.

It was still dark by the time that they headed home, still snowing, but Hiccup could not help feeling a little giddy. Or maybe that was the lack of sleep talking. Gobber only glanced up when they entered, and cocked his head. “Your father not accompanying you?”

“He’s staying with Albrekt. The wildling,” Hiccup added, as Gobber only looked more confused. “Because Spitelout needed to go home. Because Pinebolt is in labour.”

That train of thought might have been able to follow more easily had it been forwards, Hiccup had to admit, but Gobber nodded as if he had the gist of it. “May Frigg watch over her,” he said, standing up. “I, on the other hand, am more than willing to hand myself over to Nótt’s tender embrace. I’ll see you at a time that can be called morning without it being an insult.”

Hiccup chuckled. “Sleep well, Gobber.”

Muttering something about a cold bed, which Hiccup decided should be instantly forgotten about, Gobber made his way into the back room. On his way through, he tugged the stew away from the fire once again. To judge by the bowl and spoon next to where Gobber had been sitting, Albrekt had not been the only one in receipt of a midnight snack.

“If you want Toothless to stay with you, I don’t mind,” said Hiccup, then considered the size of Elsa’s room. “Or you guys can take my room. I’ve got some stuff I can work on anyway.”

“You are not going to sleep?” Elsa looked up from where she was scratching the side of Toothless’s jaw.

In all fairness, he probably should. It being cold and dark outside did not mean much, but he had been asleep when all this had started and there was a large part of him that thought going back to sleep would be an excellent idea. But he felt too keyed-up and awake, and just grinned sheepishly. “Don’t think that I could, right now.”

“You really think this will end well?” There was only a little hope in Elsa’s tone, but a little had to be enough.

“I think so,” said Hiccup. He peeled off his cape, off which the snow was now rapidly, and hung it up by the door before selecting a chair to nudge in front of the fire. He did not expect Elsa to pull over a chair opposite, nor for her to start adding more wood to the fire. “You all right?”

“I am not used to seeing other... wildlings.” She said the word carefully, as if she was not sure what would happen. “I will be glad if things go well.” For a moment longer her eyes lingered on the fire, then with the slightest shake of her shoulders she looked round to Hiccup. “What are you working on?”

“Snoggletog present,” he said, pointing in the direction of the back bedroom in lieu of mentioning Gobber’s name. Even Gobber probably couldn’t fall asleep that quickly. “Just let me get what I need from upstairs.”

New clothes for Snoggletog might have been an oddly Berkian tradition, not present even on other Viking islands, but Hiccup knew that Yul gifts were given in Arendelle at much the same time of year. The way that Elsa smiled made it clear that she understood that, at least. Perhaps remembered them, for that matter.

Hiccup waved for Toothless to stay in the main room as he made his way upstairs and retrieved Gobber’s present from the bottom of his clothes-chest. Not that Gobber was too likely to go poking around Hiccup’s room, but the summer had certainly been good for learning caution. Or possibly paranoia.

He knew that he could not replace the Book of Dragons which had been burnt when he went to face the Red Death. Every book of Dragons carried a family’s history, notes from each successive generation. No matter how many times Hiccup had read Gobber’s copy, and no matter how many of the notes he could reproduce, it wouldn’t be the same.

Hopefully, though, the new information on hatchlings, and the pages on Night Furies – or at least, Toothless – might go towards making up for it. It wasn’t going to be a comprehensive book, but then none of them were. A copy from a different island would focus on different dragons, whichever ones were more common there. And none of them would have information on Night Furies.

By the time that he managed to get himself, book, quill and ink back downstairs again, Elsa was sitting beside the fire and sewing something in black wool. He wondered whether it was her Snoggletog clothes. There was a small table beside the fire and he dragged it over to set the book on, opening it to where he had last been. Fishlegs had better handwriting, and if for their official new version of the Book of Dragons it would be him doing the writing, but this was for Gobber.

Tidal class. Scauldrons. There were probably going to be a few long nights between now and Snoggletog.

“Do they celebrate Snoggletog in the Wildlands?” said Hiccup. “Or Yul would be more likely, I suppose.”

Elsa shook her head. “Even when I was in the Village, no. There is not much to celebrate with. It will be in the Great Hall again?” She waited for Hiccup’s nod. “The Village does not have anything like that.”

Snoggletog celebrations were more extravagant on other islands, Hiccup knew that much. Bigger than Things, and more self-focused, they could last for days and involve huge feasts, incorporate weddings, have bonfires that burnt for days on end. Berk was not affluent enough for anything like that, but he suspected that the Wildlands were poorer still.

“You looking forward to this Snoggletog?” said Hiccup, pausing to let a line dry before he moved onto the next. Elsa’s hands stilled just for a moment. “What’s up?”

“It is nothing,” she said, resuming her work as if she had not missed anything. Her stitches, so far as Hiccup could see, remained perfectly even and straight. “I am not used to it, that is all.”

“They have them in Arendelle, though, right?” It did not feel as if he could draw back from the subject, not with Gobber’s present open before him and Elsa sewing something that was almost certainly to do with Snoggletog. The best that he could do was press on to a happier time of it. “Probably rather different from here, though.”

Elsa faltered for a moment, but then she smiled. “Yes. There were parties. My sister and I were too young to go, though.”

“Oh, the whole village will be turning out here,” said Hiccup, in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. He tilted the book a little more and started on the next sentence. “Even Pinebolt and Burplout’s newest, if Pinebolt is up to moving around by then.”

“One year we snuck down to the top of a staircase to watch. There were women in long dresses, men in suits. We heard the music. Then I think someone saw us, and we ran away.” She shook her head, adjusted her seam. “Another year, our parents gave us these dolls. They gave her one that looked like me, and me–”

“One that looked like her?” said Hiccup.

Elsa nodded. “Mostly we used them as captured princesses. Then one of us would be a dragon and the other would save them.”

“I’ve heard fairy tales like that,” he said. Reaching the end of another paragraph, he drew back a moment to read it over, then found himself watching the movements of Elsa’s hands as she sewed around another corner. “I’m sorry, where did you learn to sew like that? I’m actually a little bit jealous.”

“I don’t remember. When I was a child, I suppose.” Elsa reached one small corner of the wool, set her needle aside, and began to pull it inside out, hiding away her stitches. She tugged it into shape and held it up: a banner, flat-topped with two downwards points. “What do you think?”

“Very nice,” he said, honestly. “What is it for?”

She pointed in Gobber’s general direction. A snore answered her, loud enough to make Toothless raise his head and look around in apparent confusion. Hiccup just about managed not to laugh, and he saw Elsa’s smile before she hid it behind her hand. “Snoggletog,” she said. “There will be an anvil, here. I have some grey wool left from a skirt.”

“They have those in Arendelle, don’t they?” Hiccup had faint memories of such banners, almost like vertical flags, hanging outside some shops in Arendelle. Others had favoured wooden signs, but there had definitely been fabric ones as well.

This time, Elsa’s nod was a little more cautious. “I think so. I remember seeing them in the streets.”

“It’ll look great,” he said. They didn’t really have shops in Berk the way that they did in Arendelle, but the smithy was perhaps as close as they got. “And hey, nowadays we don’t have to replace everything flammable every moon or so.”

Come spring, there were going to be a lot of people with more time on their hands. Short of new people arriving – like Burplout and his family, in need of a house being cleaned and mended to live in – they probably would not need much more construction work done. At least, he hoped for that, as well. With a smile, Hiccup propped his cheek in his right hand, and set about working on the Book again.

He must have dozed off at some point, because he jumped awake as the door opened and Stoick walked in with a heavy sigh. Peeling his hand from his cheek, Hiccup tried to look as if he had not been asleep as he turned to his father. Stoick was shrugging off his fur cloak, pushing back his helmet to brush melting snow off his forehead.

“Someone taken over?” hazarded Hiccup.

Stoick nodded. “Seaweed will keep watch until dawn. The W...” he caught himself, with a minute glance towards Elsa. “Albrekt looked to be sleeping.” His chair was a little further away from the fire, but he sank into it with a groan, undoing the bracer on his left arm to reveal a red mark that looked like a burn.

“Dad!”

“I’ve had worse,” said Stoick, waving Hiccup down before he could even fully stand up. “We’ve still got some burn ointment standing by.”

Not that he seemed wholly inclined to actually stand up and go in search of it, but Hiccup could not really blame him for that. When Stoick reached up to rub his brow, it showed the lines there. Hiccup knew he had probably been responsible for a few of those, as well. “Any news on Pinebolt?”

“Nothing yet. Not the worst time of winter, but...” Stoick trailed off, shrugging.

It was the one thing that had been on Hiccup’s side, by all accounts. He had been born in the spring, a good-luck baby, when the weather was warm and food was available. Those born in winter were bad-luck babies by the same count, always faced with worse odds with the cold and lack of food at the very beginning.

“This year should be easier,” said Hiccup. He looked over at Toothless, who was hanging from the rafters and occasionally huffing softly in his sleep. “We aren’t feeding the Red Death as well.”

 

 

 

 

 

Morning just about arrived, though it didn’t seem too enthused by the whole idea. As soon as Gobber’s snoring petered out, Hiccup hurried away the new Book of Dragons once again, doing his damnedest to make it up the stairs quietly despite his left foot. It wasn’t hard to miss how amused Stoick looked, though whether it was at Hiccup’s fleeing or at the fact that Elsa ducked back into her room at the same moment and for the same reason was rather more difficult to say.

Changing clothes, and washing his hands and face, made him at least feel more awake. By the time that he came downstairs, Gobber was up and about, and Elsa was sitting at the table and combing her hair as if she had not been scrambling to hide Snoggletog presents either. He wondered if it was with her sister that she had learnt to look the picture of innocence.

“Plans for today?” said Gobber, rubbing his chin and grimacing slightly. He was the only one in the house who shaved, and usually blamed Stoick when he forgot. “You might still be able to get up to the academy on foot.”

“As entertaining as it would be to see Snotlout try,” Hiccup replied, “I will have to leave endangering my friends for another day.” Gobber raised a brow. “Albrekt. These first few days will be important.”

“If you say so,” said Stoick, catching Hiccup by surprise, “then I trust you.”

The smile that he gave Hiccup made him feel warm, even if it ached a little in the centre of his chest. He stood a little straighter, and smiled in return.

“Well, I’ll be in the forge if you need me,” put in Gobber. “Wildsky Joar is salting up some of the meat for us, he owes me for that sword still. I’m looking forward to some peace and quiet after Snoggletog!”

Toothless chose this moment to yawn hugely, showing off his teeth, and drop down to the floor. He shook his head with a chirrup.

“Let me know when you find peace and quiet around here,” said Stoick. “I’ll go see how our wildling is doing. I’m guessing some breakfast won’t go amiss, so bring some over when you come,” he added, with a nod to Elsa. Hiccup was going to take it as read that he would be waiting with Elsa as well, and they would join Stoick later. And breakfast did sound like a good idea.

He bolted his breakfast so fast that Gobber shook his head, but he was too excited to worry about anything else. It was only as he was licking the spoon clean that Hiccup realised Elsa was only picking at her food, teasing bones out of the fish to pass to Toothless, and he felt a pang of guilt hit hard in his stomach.

“You don’t have to come,” he said, reaching for her elbow. She shifted away from him, though it was at least a little more subtle this time. “I managed to communicate with you all right. I’m sure we’ll manage. Or it can wait.”

“No,” said Elsa. She put down her bowl and stepped away from the table. “I will be all right. As you said, this is important.” Before he could apologise for the words, she added; “We should go.”

Foot, meet mouth. He supposed that it was too much to ask for the number of times that he did that to be halved. With a vague wave to Gobber, who was looking sadly at them both, Hiccup made his escape from the house and into the soft, steady snowfall outside. Elsa joined him, while Toothless made the rather enviable decision to stay inside in the warm and dry.

They started to trudge down the slopes towards the jail, Hiccup struggling to think of something to say while trying not to fall over on the uneven, slippery ground. In the end he did not manage it, and they were barely within fifty feet of the jail when Stoick burst back out through the door, grabbed Seaweed by the front of his tunic and almost lifted him bodily in the air.

“You were supposed to be keeping watch!” shouted Stoick.

Hiccup felt his throat constrict. He broke into a run, and this time it was the snow more than his foot that held him back as he ran towards his father.

“Chief–” began Seaweed, face reddening.

“You volunteered to take this watch, and now–”

“What’s going on?” Hiccup asked, staggering to a halt close to them. He tried to look into the jail, but his father dropped Seaweed in favour of closing the door instead. “What’s happened?”

Seaweed looked just as confused, though he was leaning back from Stoick’s glare. “The wildling is dead,” said Stoick. “Hanged from the bars.”

Hiccup tried to say _what_ , but the word caught in his throat and all that he could do was stare at his father. He wished that this was just another nightmare, but it was not.

“Hanged?” Seaweed managed to say.

“Some item of his clothing,” said Stoick. “Has anyone been in here?”

“No, Chief! Not since I took over from you,” said Seaweed. He was still young, only a few years older than Hiccup and not quite filled out with muscle yet, and there were plenty of people who looked small in front of Stoick the Vast. The colour had drained from his face, and he spread his hands as if to show that he had no weapons there. “He must have done it himself.”

Hiccup could see in Stoick’s eyes that he had already suspected that, but had not wanted it to be true. Stoick’s jaw clenched, and he looked towards the door again, then slammed his fist against the stone wall hard enough to make Hiccup flinch. “Damn them all,” he muttered, eyes distant and voice vague. “I should have seen this.”

“Dad, you couldn’t have known–”

“I should have considered every possibility,” said Stoick. He gave Seaweed one last angry look, then turned to Hiccup. Elsa, who had not broken into a run, slipped up beside them. “Go home, both of you. You won’t be needed here.”

Stoick was already blaming himself, Hiccup could see. But it had not been his idea to try to talk to a wildling, it had not been him who had asked Elsa what they might do. If there was blame to be found in Berk, Hiccup was more than ready to accept it. “I’ll see this handled,” he said.

It made Stoick blink, mouth opening but no words coming for a moment. “Hiccup, no,” he said finally. “I will handle this.”

The sound of crunching snow made Hiccup look round, to see Spitelout charging down the slope behind them with a grin on his face. It faded as he slowed and took in the tableau which he had interrupted.

It might have been his imagination, but Hiccup thought that he heard a child’s cries in the distance. “I’m guessing that means Pinebolt’s given birth,” he said, probably taking the words right out of Spitelout’s mouth. He gave his father a steady look. “You’re the Chief, and a cousin. You should be there. I did this.”

Stoick looked as if he was going to protest again, then caught himself, looking at Hiccup with such raw uncertainty that it made Hiccup feel weak. “We don’t know their custom,” he said, more softly.

There was a way to find out, though, and Hiccup did not need to point that out. If Elsa remembered the Silver Priest’s god and its rules, Hiccup had no doubt that she would know at least something about what the wildlings did. “Some things can still be done without custom,” said Hiccup.

A shift in the wind bought a very definite cry through the air. “Send someone for Gothi,” said Stoick. He pressed his lips tightly together.

“I will,” Hiccup replied. He hoped, for one wild moment, that his father would pat him on the shoulder again, but then Stoick was leaving to wade through the snow with Spitelout, and he was left to deal with the mess he had taken a role in making.

“Seaweed,” he said once his father was done, voice coming out steadier than he had expected, “go and find two people. Send the first one to fetch Gothi, and the second one to fetch water, then find a stretcher and come back here.”

He saw the hesitation. Hiccup squared his shoulders, tilted his chin up slightly, and looked Seaweed in the eye. “Yes, Hiccup,” said Seaweed finally, backing away a step before turning and hurrying back towards the main square.

Hiccup let out the breath that he was holding, sending the urge to shake with it, and turned to Elsa. He was not sure how much she had heard, but she was frowning, her eyes on the door of the jail. “Something happened,” she said quietly.

“He’s dead,” said Hiccup. Elsa flinched, but her expression only tightened slightly. “I’m sorry.”

“I did not know him.”

There was a hollowness to the words that stopped them from sounding callow. “Normally, wildlings are just taken out into the Wildlands and buried. I don’t know anything about their rites. Is there any way we can send his body back to them?”

“Their Village is smaller than Berk,” said Elsa. “They will know an outsider.”

“Could you find them?”

“If I need to.”

 

 

 

 

 

It had been indistinct at first, nothing really clear enough for him to call it a plan, but it took shape as Seaweed came back with Windthorn behind him. She was frowning, but that was not all that unusual and did not mean all that much. He had Toothless, and as long as they were together the darkness would be on their side.

Vikings came from, and by habit settled, small islands with hard ground. In some of the richer, larger islands, Hiccup knew that the dead were buried with boats instead of set to sail in them, though in truth it did not matter as long as there was a craft to see them over the sea and safely to the shores of the dead. He would ask Elsa, after this, what the wildlings believed, whether their rites were like Viking ones or like the old Arendellen ones from before the Silver Priests or something different altogether.

Death did not stay a mystery on Berk for very long, and Hiccup couldn’t remember how many years ago he had first seen a body. It was true, though, that the ones he had seen had been already laid out for the watch or for their funerals, and he was not expecting what met him when he walked into the room.

The crumpled form, the bloodless face, the deep bruise that cut deep into the side of the man’s jaw... it looked wrong. _Was_ wrong. Hiccup took a deep breath, and told himself that the best he could do now was make sure that Albrekt was treated better than wildlings had been in the past.

Neither Seaweed nor Windthorn looked happy to be helping with the task, but to Hiccup’s surprise they did not say a word against him. Even when Young Flounderson knocked in the door respectfully to say that Gothi was there – he must have cleared the path for her – they looked round, then to Hiccup for instructions on what to do next.

Perhaps he should not have bothered Gothi, not at a time like this when there was a child newly born in the village. But she listened to Albrekt’s chest where he lay stretched out on his back on the sling, checked under his eyelids and inside his mouth, and nodded solemnly to Hiccup.

Doing things right, he reminded himself. They would have it done for a Berkian, and there was no reason that Albrekt should not get the same.

He helped them to wash Albrekt down, clean up his clothes as best they could, and wrap him in the blanket which they had given him during the night before putting him onto the stretcher. There was an old chamber cut into the stone cliffs that framed the southern end of town, once used for watching over the dead and now left closed, with the wooden doors checked on each summer and replaced if they were needed.

“The old waiting cave,” he said to Seaweed and Young Flounderson, as they made to lift the stretcher upon which Albrekt lay. That was all the name that they had for it, these days. He felt weak, shaky, but did his best to not look it as they lifted the stretcher and, without a word, started off.

Elsa had stayed in the room as well, though she had stayed back. The torch beside which she stood flickered, but it was hard to tell whether the room was getting colder or not.

“This isn’t your fault,” he said, once it was just them in the room. Elsa turned to look at him, eyes haunted, and he could not work out whether she looked younger than ever or older than she was. “What happened?”

“I told him that we would not harm him,” she said.

She looked down to her hands, nails cut very short and skin very pale. For a moment, she paused, and Hiccup could almost see the words swelling in her until they burst from her lips in a breathless rush.

“They are scared of you. Of Berk. They know that you fight dragons, when they do not, and they know that you kill them. Kill wildlings,” she said, with a slight, harsh shake of her head. “You are stronger than they are. That is why they do not come here often. Only now, when there is food.”

It seemed so strange, that _wildlings_ should be scared of _them_. Wildlings were the ones that were barely human, according to the old Berkian stories, the ones who treated with dark magic to gain their powers. Of course, that was all unravelling, and Hiccup had to admit that Vikings could be very... well, _Viking_. Edged weapons and all.

“There will be a camp, right? Within a day or so of here.” He wished that he could say something better, but words could only do so much right now. One day, when he spoke to the wildlings themselves, they would be worth more. Hiccup sighed, and caught Elsa’s hand before she could pull it away. “You don’t have to be afraid of us, Elsa.”

“I don’t,” she replied, and he could tell there was so much more in the words but did not know exactly what it was.

 

 

 

 

 

He saw to it that Seaweed and Young Flounderson laid out Albrekt in the waiting cave, and Gothi drew symbols on the walls in chalk that would do for watchers until the sun set. Perhaps he should have stayed, but Hiccup could not bear to, and the doors were barely closed before he turned his steps home again.

Elsa slipped into her room without a word, letting the curtain fall behind her, and all that Hiccup could do was slump down on the stairs, body suddenly too heavy even to climb them. His chest ached. He dropped his head into his hands. Another life thrown away because of feuds that could be ended, if only people tried. His eyes started to burn, but he took a deep breath and refused to cry.  For today, at least, he would have to be the chief’s son.

He heard Toothless padding down the stairs, then the Night Fury squirmed in beside him and rubbed against his arm. It made Hiccup half-smile for a moment, then he slung his arm over Toothless’s shoulder and buried his face in his neck. The scales were warm and smooth against his forehead, the soft sound of Toothless’s breathing like waves of calm. Toothless turned his head to press closer to Hiccup, and a wing unfolded to nudge against his back.

“Thanks, Toothless,” murmured Hiccup, the sound almost lost.

Toothless rumbled in return, the sound deep in his chest, and Hiccup finally laughed and sat upright.

“How about we go for a fly, huh? It’s been two days now.” A year ago, he would never have dreamt that two days without flying would somehow be an unusual thing, but now it itched beneath his skin to get into the air again. “Reckon we can get above the snow?”

Pawing with one of his forefeet, Toothless huffed, which Hiccup supposed was an agreement. Toothless could not just fly faster than the other dragons, but higher, and even when Hiccup was breathing fast in the thin air Toothless did not even seem to notice it. It was getting easier, though.

“Come on, then, let’s get your saddle.”

Having a purpose was enough to get him up the stairs this time, and Toothless stayed still enough to have his saddle and tail put on even though Hiccup could see his plates twitching and nostrils flaring impatiently. When they were in place, he gave a muted shriek, bounding up onto Hiccup’s bed and off again almost quickly enough that Hiccup did not hear the wood creaking.

Hiccup rolled his eyes. “That wasn’t made for a dragon, you know. At least wait until summer, if you’re going to break it. There’ll be more wood available then.”

He felt vaguely sick, stomach tight, but told himself that it would settle down once he was in the air again. Just a short while to leave their worries behind. He slung the sheath for his cane onto his back and made his way back downstairs, reaching the front door before catching himself.

His footsteps, or at least the left ones, sounded very loud as he crossed to Elsa’s room again and knocked on the frame. “Elsa? Did you want to come flying?” Silence. “I know you’re not always a fan, but I thought...”

Hoped, perhaps. Hiccup leant his head against his hand, grimacing, then snapped upright as the curtain was pulled open.

“Thank you, Hiccup,” said Elsa, “but I would rather stay on the ground. Besides,” she added, almost smiling, “I have your Snoggletog present to finish.”

Her eyes were red, cheeks slightly flushed, but he refrained from commenting on it. He would have refrained, as well, from pointing out the ice that spider-webbed across the curtain where she touched it, had Elsa herself not seen it and drawn away with a sharp gasp, clutching her hand to her chest. The curtain was frozen enough to stay solidly in place, half-open to reveal the room within.

“It’s all right!” said Hiccup quickly, going to step after Elsa as she backed up. The little room was still so bare, just a bed and clothes-chest and a candle set beside the bed, not currently lit. Hiccup’s breath became a mist, and the temperature dropped so quickly that his nose and fingers started to ache. “It’s fine. It’s just ice. There’s plenty outside, as well.” He reached out his hand, palm-up. “Come on. Let’s go flying, get some air.”

“No. Please.” Elsa swallowed, looking at his hand as if it held a knife. “I just need... to be alone for a while. It’s easier that way.”

For whom, he did not ask. Elsa looked at him pleadingly, and after a moment Hiccup gave in and dropped his hand once again. “There’s plenty of wood for the fire,” he said, “if you want it.” Gobber would likely be with Stoick by now, meeting the newest member of the Jorgensons. By rights Hiccup would be expected there right now, but he could not quite go from the newly dead to the newly living so quickly. “I’ll be back before dark.”

Reluctantly, he turned away, and went with Toothless into the snow outside instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning notes: graphic description of the aftermath of suicide by hanging.


	18. Chapter 18

It had been in one of his mother’s books that Hiccup had first read about trollwort. When he had mentioned it to his father – and, later, to Gobber – they had waved him away and said that doubtless it was just old name for a plant that didn’t necessarily mean a thing. But the book had said that it grew in the highest of places, on the coldest of slopes, and Hiccup had spent more than enough of his time scrambling around up to his arse in snow until he had found it, with its long bluish tendrils and tiny white flowers. It had seemed to grow on almost bare rock.

Getting to the highest slopes was a lot easier with a dragon. Even with how short the days were at this time of year, the sun was barely setting when he returned to the village, with earth and snow on his gloves, and a bundle of trollwort in his cloak.

The house was even colder than the world outside. Hiccup sucked in a breath at the shock of it, almost staggering back out of the doorway again from sheer disbelief. Bracing himself, he pressed back in again, and as he looked around realised that ice was creeping through the living room as well.

This was not good. His heart began to pound in his chest, but he forced himself to stay calm as he crossed to Elsa’s room. Cracked, white ice streaked out across the floor from Elsa’s doorway, spines of ice angled from her curtain sharper than icicles, and fine points of snow hung motionless in the air. They stung on his exposed cheeks as he unwound his scarf.

“Elsa?” He could taste the cold, see his breath. Oh gods, this was bad. Fighting back the panic, he finally reached her door. “Elsa, it’s just me, Hiccup.”

She did not reply. Hiccup reached up to push open the curtain, but it crunched beneath his fingers and broke into pieces that clattered on the floor. He snatched his hand away again, then looked around the room to see Elsa curled up at the head of her bed, knees tucked up to her chest.

“Elsa,” he said, more softly. She looked up, eyes huge, and scrambled away from him, backing right into the corner. “It’s all right!” Hiccup added. “I’ve got you more trollwort!”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. It was still so strange that her breath did not appear as steam as well. “It is dangerous.”

He almost quipped that this was, after all, his house, but it died on his lips. Instead he offered the curve of his cloak, filled with still-muddy tendrils of trollwort. “Here. This should help.”

It came out more of a question than he had meant, but Elsa finally looked to the trollwort before reaching out, ice spreading over her skin like shards of glass, and taking hold of it. She gasped at the touch, but the ice faded to reveal her skin again, from her fingertips and along her arms like a rolling wave. She closed her hand so tightly that her knuckles turned white, squeezing her eyes closed despite the tears that Hiccup saw starting there. He was not sure if he should look away or not.

He threw in his lot and chose _closer_. Dropping to his knee, Hiccup wrapped his cloak around Elsa, his arms around his cloak, and held close even as she shook. He watched as the ice in her hair melted away, then the wooden wall behind her became clear, and finally felt the air in the room began to grow less cold.

Darkness wrapped around them. Hiccup frowned, then smelled dragon and heard Toothless rumble and knew what had happened.

“It’s all right,” he said.

The air grew tepid, then warm, around them. Elsa shivered, then shifted, and Hiccup drew back enough to let her raise her head and look around them in apparent confusion.

“Bud, back up a bit.” With a huff, Toothless lowered his wings again, revealing Elsa’s room now cleared of ice and with only the ragged curtain to show that there had been any at all. Her cheeks were pink, eyes lined in red, and she looked fearfully at Hiccup even as he tried not to fall over in front of her. Hiccup gestured to the cloak. “I think I just threw trollwort all over you. Sorry.”

Elsa almost chuckled, but there was no sound to it, and there was no light in her eyes. “It could have been worse.”

He let up the embrace enough for her to push the cloak away, and sure enough there were blue tendrils all over her clothing. Earth still clung to it, and now to her. She started to pick them off, carefully gathering them up in one hand.

“I can show you how to make them into a sort of twine,” said Hiccup. “This won’t be enough to make the rope like last time, but if you just want the bracelets it should do.” He had not been sure whether the fresh material would work or whether it would somehow need to be processed, but was relieved that it did. “Starting tonight, if you want.”

“Thank you,” she said. Tiredness dripped from the words.

“There’s just... something I need to do first.”

 

 

 

 

 

Hunting for wildlings was known to be one of the hardest things that anyone on Berk could try to do. They knew the Wildlands better, and could usually melt away before even the stealthiest of Vikings could come close to them. But Hiccup knew that he had something that most Vikings didn’t, and that was going to be a birds-eye – or perhaps a dragons-eye – view.

Albrekt’s body was still tightly wrapped in the dark blanket, and he got Gobber to help him move the wildling into a net as well, so that Toothless would be better able to lift him. The dark grey wool of Toothless’s tail would not be too visible against the sky, and Hiccup dressed in dark clothes again, wrapping a scarf back across his face against both cold and visibility.

“If you see Dad before I get back,” he said to Gobber, “let him know where I’ve gone.”

Gobber nodded and backed away as Toothless’s wings spread out. “I will.”

They could not spring straight into the air as they usually did. Hiccup held them so low to the ground that the downstrokes of his wings almost brushed the snow, and waited until he felt the tug of the extra weight as Toothless took hold of the net. Then he let Toothless have his head up into the air, letting the ground peel away until it was far off beneath them.

He levelled out only when they started to hit wisps of clouds. Wildlings needed fires as much as anyone else, he was certain, and though it would be easy enough to hide them in pits or beneath the boughs of larger trees, he did not think that it would be so easy to hide an entire village – Kiirkylla, Elsa and Albrekt had called it – from the air.

Berk blazed below him, as small as a hearthfire from this distance, fires in the streets and in the mouths of guardians, light spilling from the Great Hall. The mountains that formed the backbone of the island meant that he could not see Arendelle, not from this height and with the clouds in the way, but he had no doubt that it would be even more brightly lit. But in between was darkness as deep as the sea, so deep that he never did get used to it.

He sought for a spark in that darkness, trying not to squint no matter how tempting it was. There would be a party that would come north to Berk, Elsa had said, but the rest of them would remain behind. It would be easier to find fish than game at this time of year, and the best fishing was to be had on the west coast, albeit more in autumn than in winter.

Finally, he caught sight of a flicker of fire. “There,” he breathed behind his scarf, and with a shift in his weight sent Toothless cutting through the air. It stung around his eyes as they swooped down through layers of night, until they were barely above the trees.

“Hold off, Toothless,” said Hiccup, drawing back again. They stopped perhaps a hundred feet from the flicker of fire, and from here Hiccup could see that there were not one but several, each of them mostly hidden but just about visible from the height at which Toothless hung. Above the rush of the wind and the beat of wings, he thought that he could hear voices in the distance.

It would not do to go all the way into the camp. There were too many questions for which he did not have answers, too many questions that he wanted to ask in turn, and somehow he doubted that a body would make things any easier. Instead he guided Toothless down into the nearest small clearing that he could find, just wide enough to land in. They set the body down, then landed beside it, and Hiccup slipped from Toothless’s back as quietly as he was able.

With no-one there to help him, the best that he could do was rather inelegantly drag the net out from under Albrekt, the movement made easier by the snow. It was so cold that the body had not fully stiffened, and when he peeled back the blanket Albrekt’s arms had slipped and his head was tilted to one side.

Hiccup did his best to straighten out the errant limbs, then wrapped the blanket around Albrekt again so that just his face was exposed. They had already tied a thin cord under his chin so that his mouth did not loll open and invite in demons.

Finally, he took a note from his pocket, read over it one last time, and then tucked it into Albrekt’s tunic. That part, he had not told his father about, and nor did he intend to. On it, in Northur and Arendellen, he had simply written _we are sorry_.

It was the best that he could offer them for now.

“I don’t know if your words are the same as ours,” he said, straightening up again. The Wildlings should be able to find Albrekt here, and take care of him, but it felt wrong to leave him behind with no words at all. “I hope you find your home. That there’s food and warmth waiting for you. That there’s peace.”

He backed away, and jumped when he came up against Toothless once again. Shaking his head, Hiccup got a grip on himself.

“Sorry, bud. Come on, let’s give them a sign.”

He gestured to one of the branches of a pine tree nearby, and Toothless rocked up onto his hind legs to rip it off. It made a crunching sound, and the whole tree shuddered; Hiccup froze, holding his breath, until he was at least fairly sure that the Wildlings would not be coming running in response to that alone.

Mercifully, none did. He took the branch from Toothless and quickly cut away the needles, then sharpened the end enough that he could drive it into the ground. It was still a good three feet tall, and broad at the base. Burning green wood was not the best of ideas, but he had not thought of doing this until he was in the air.

He pointed at the branch firmly. “Toothless, plasma blast.”

Toothless cocked his head, and Hiccup jabbed his finger again. This time, by luck or understanding, Toothless obliged with a puff of flame that caught and ignited the head of the branch immediately, turning it into a long torch. The flame was smoky and very orange, but it would do.

“Good job,” said Hiccup, voice softening. He led Toothless away before slipping back into the saddle, so that their wings would not immediately blow out the torch once again, and returned to the air feeling as if he had left some weight behind as well.

 

 

 

 

 

A hand wrapped around his throat. Hiccup tried to claw it away, but it was as hard as dragon hide, and the fire that filled his eyes started to dim as it constricted, tighter, tighter, cutting off his air. _No_ , he could not stop fighting, the island was burning around him and he had to find the others, to help them, his father and Gobber and Toothless and Elsa and Astrid and Berk, Berk was burning and he could not stop it.

Alvin leered close, his eyes blank walls of fire as well. “Look at you now, _Dragon Conquerer_.”

Hiccup jerked awake with a strangled sound, sweat dripping down his skin and feeling cold against the night air. It was just a dream. Another dream. He sat up in his bed and dropped his head to rest on his knee, forcing himself to breathe more calmly despite the way that his heart was racing in his chest.

With a chirp, Toothless shifted in the darkness, then huffed loudly. It was welcome, when Hiccup still felt as if he could hear the crackling of fire around him. At least the cold meant that he could tell dreams and reality apart.

“It’s all right, bud,” said Hiccup. “I’m still here.”

 _Here_ meant more than just a word. It meant not about to wave an axe at whoever was unfortunate enough to have to awaken him. Stoick was getting better at that, but Hiccup had still found himself at the business end of a blade before now.

Toothless rumbled. Hiccup’s sheets were damp with sweat, and getting clammy already in the Berk winter air. He grimaced, reluctant to lie down again, not trusting himself to fall back into the nightmares either.

“Got a spare wing?” he asked wryly, thinking of what Elsa had said. That it had been the nightmares which had driven her to Toothless’s side. He was not expected Toothless to murr in reply, the sound always surprisingly gentle to hear from a Night Fury’s throat.

Sleeping beside a dragon was probably a new step into being strange. For a moment, Hiccup tried to persuade himself that he did not want to do it, but as his eyes closed for a moment he felt a hand on his throat again and jolted back awake. Things had been getting better, for a while, but tonight it was too much and he was so tired that he could almost cry and dreading sleep both at the same time.

He grabbed one of the blankets from his bed, tucked it around his shoulders, and shuffled as far down the bed as he could. It would not be worth putting on his leg for so short a movement, if he could even find it in the darkness, and Toothless was only a few feet from his bed in any case. Hiccup lowered himself stiffly to the floor and crawled across the two feet, until he was close enough to feel the warmth radiating off Toothless and feel his breath when he huffed again.

“There you are,” he said softly, raising a hand. Toothless brushed his nose against it. “Got some space on there?”

The slate was slightly warm to the touch, probably from Toothless’s habit of breathing fire onto it, and when Hiccup heard the unfurl of a wing he pushed the blanket up against Toothless’s side. It was an odd sort of relief to roll into place and feel the wing settle back down over him once again. The rock beneath him was almost uncomfortable, but the smell of dragon, cut through with leather and human sweat, was soothing, and he bundled the blanket up enough to make something of a pillow beneath his head.

When Toothless rumbled again, Hiccup felt it reverberate through him, settling down into his bones. It was not like the screams that he had felt before. Tiredness washed over him again, and this time he gave into it, and settled his head down against Toothless’s forepaw as he sunk back down into sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Hiccup awoke to the sound, and the feeling, of Toothless murmuring beside him. It was a little like being shaken awake, and he blinked and shifted for a moment wondering why it was so dark before remembering that he was underneath Toothless’s wing. He stuck a hand in the direction that he hoped was _out_ , and then Toothless obligingly raised his wing a few inches and let in the light of what was vaguely supposed to be morning.

“And what,” said Gobber, standing at the top of the stairs with a lantern and an unimpressed look, “are you doing under there?”

“Playing Dragon Master,” said Hiccup. He propped himself on one elbow and rubbed his eyes with the other hand. “I’m better at it. I have a real dragon.”

“Aye, you’re awake then.”

He could not remember his dreams. That was generally a good thing nowadays, as there was far too much that could make them unpleasant, and something of a surprise as well. “Is my Dad looking for me?”

“He wanted to know if you were ready to talk about yesterday,” said Gobber, a little more gently. Hiccup frowned, but did not protest, and nudged Toothless’s wing aside altogether so that he could sit up and wrap the blanket around his shoulders. He felt stiff, from being curled more tightly than usual, but the feeling of having slept well rolled over even that. “Though words might be said about the fact that this is the second night out of three Elsa has not been in her own room.”

Hiccup groaned. “My father has a sorely over-active imagination,” he said, then regretted even thinking such words and could not look Gobber in the eye. Instead he leant forwards and looked to Toothless’s other side, catching side of a glimpse of white-blonde hair without a wing even needing to be raised. “And I have many things on my mind,” he continued, “but my love life, or to be more precise the lack thereof, is not one of them.”

His hair really was getting too long. He pushed it back out of his face, finally daring to look at Gobber and relieved that the man’s expression had not changed. “I’m just warning you,” Gobber said.

“Maybe I should get a chaperone, like they do in Arendelle,” Hiccup grumbled. He had left his metal foot over by the bed, but at least in daylight he could see exactly how far from it he was. Getting his good foot underneath him, he managed to lurch upright and only wobble for a moment before leaning forwards far enough to rest his hand on his clothes-chest as he manoeuvred his way back. “You know, the prosthetic I can handle,” he said, both to change the subject and because Gobber would actually understand. “It’s the times that I have to take it off that are annoying.”

“Don’t I know it.” Gobber held up his hook, but he sounded amused and even if he was just giving in to Hiccup’s obvious distraction techniques, that was enough. “The last of that leather should be cut into shape for you today, if you want to pick it up. This the last one?”

“Yes. Thanks, Gobber,” said Hiccup, and smiled even as Gobber nodded and took his leave from the room again.

As Gobber was clumping down the stairs, Hiccup looked over to Toothless, who had his front legs tucked up in front of him and his left wing still draped over Elsa. “What are we gonna do, huh, bud?” he asked. Toothless cocked his head and licked his lips. “Yeah, breakfast sounds like a start to me too. Come on, then.”

He dressed hurriedly, keeping an eye out for movement from Elsa, but she must have been very soundly asleep still. Asking whether her magic physically tired her would probably not be taken well right now. At least the trollwort fibres were drying out now, and might even be ready to work with by the evening.

Once he was fit to be seen, Hiccup finally crossed next to Toothless and knelt down, gesturing for him to fold back his wing again. Toothless did so with a rumble, and Elsa stirred as the light fell across her. She looked at the stone beneath her, then grabbed at the blanket and held it up to her chest as she spun to see Hiccup just a couple of feet away.

“Morning,” he said. Elsa was still looking at him uncertainly. “Everyone else is up. Do you want me to bring some clothes up here so you can get changed in privacy?”

That had been a word which had come up when the curtain had been fitted to the workshop. Elsa nodded, sitting up and gathering the blanket around herself. “I am sorry,” she said quietly.

“For what?” Hiccup almost laughed. “For having nightmares, or for my father’s apparently robust belief in my sexual magnetism?” The words left him before he could think better of them, and as Elsa looked round with a frown Hiccup really did start laughing. “No, please don’t ask me to explain that. Or ask Ruffnut.” To be honest, the thought of Astrid hearing those words was also pretty mortifying. “You know what, it might be better to forget I said that.”

“Unholy wildling charms,” said Elsa, with unerring accuracy.

“Pretty much,” he admitted. As Elsa rubbed at her wrists again, averting her eyes, he rocked back to sit on the floor, at her eye level. “Elsa... it isn’t your fault, what Albrekt did. None of it is. You don’t have to feel guilty.”

Elsa tugged the blankets more tightly around herself. “It is not him,” she said. “Not just him.”

With time, he had recovered at least some memory of the hours that had led up to the fight against the Red Death. She had used her powers with relatively little fear then, to break the jail open, though perhaps the fight against the Red Death itself had made things more difficult on that front. “What’s changed?” said Hiccup. Elsa glanced round, frowning again. “Since the summer. Aside from everything, I suppose,” he said, waving towards his leg in lieu of being able to list everything that had changed about both of their lives in the last few moons. He wasn’t sure how he could put the question to her without intruding too much into the space which she kept around herself. “What is it?”

He saw the indecision cross Elsa’s face, but held back and let her work through whatever thoughts troubled her. “It is the winter,” she said finally.

Hiccup nodded.

“The summer is easier. At least... I know when the ice is me.”

“Winters on Berk have been hard for as long as anyone can remember,” he said. “I really doubt that you _could_ make much of a difference to them.”

There were probably better ways that he could have phrased that. But Elsa turned and gave him, if not a smile, then at least a slightly less pained look. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I’m still believing,” he added impulsively, thinking of the night when she had ringed herself in ice because of an ill-put comment from his father. If there was nothing else that he could do to help her, he could at least do that. “And I’ll keep on doing it.”

Elsa nodded, looking at him gratefully, but did not say anything else. The silence hung between them for long enough that Toothless wandered back over from the top of the stairs and huffed in Hiccup’s face. Which was probably a good thing, because Hiccup was starting to feel like he ought to have something more to say.

“I should head downstairs, before my father starts getting more ideas,” he said. “I’ll bring your clothes back up in a moment.”

As Elsa nodded again, Hiccup levered himself to his feet, sticking out his tongue in concentration. It was definitely getting easier to deal with the leg, now, and was mostly a case of remembering that he didn’t really have an ankle any more. Other than that, it was getting easier to make his way downstairs; the hard part on this occasion was looking nonchalant as his father looked up from the half-carved wooden duck in his hands.

“Morning, Dad!” said Hiccup cheerfully, turning immediately towards Elsa’s room. “Hope there’s plenty of breakfast. I’m starving.”

“Uh-huh,” said Stoick. It was amazing how dubious he could sound in just two syllables. “And what do you think you’re doing?”

Technically, that wasn’t telling him to stop. Hiccup looked around Elsa’s room, but the set of clothes folded neatly on the floor by Elsa’s bed still had earth and trollwort on them, and that probably wasn’t the best set to be giving her. Instead he opened the clothes-chest, rather hastily as he heard the scrape of his father’s chair. “Just helping out,” he called, leaning his cane on the wall so that he had two hands to search. “I mean, I thought we were trying to make the living room a nightwear-free area.”

Toothless stuck his head through the doorway, tilting it curiously. Before he could think better of it, Hiccup made a flat downwards gesture with his palm, mouthing ‘sit’. It only took a few attempts before Toothless obediently parked his rear end on the ground and sat up, pretty much filling the doorway.

“What the–” said Stoick.

“Sorry, Dad! You know how he is!”

Moving rather more hastily now, Hiccup grabbed a shirt, skirt and leggings from the chest, and hesitated only for a moment before searching for some underwear as well and grabbing that from the pile. Not giving Elsa underwear was probably going to count as worse than looking through Elsa’s underwear, even if there was really no winner in that situation.

“Toothless, move back,” Stoick blustered outside.

Hiccup grabbed a second skirt and used it to wrap up the clothes into a bundle more easily carried under one arm. “Hang on, Dad, let me. Come on, bud,” he said, moving towards Toothless and gesturing upwards again. It was a little bit hard not to grin. “Let me out of here.”

Toothless stood up, and Hiccup was just close enough to the doorway to see his father have to hastily back up out of the way of the dragon’s tail. Showing any amusement, Hiccup reminded himself, was going to get him into trouble. More trouble, that was. He waved for Toothless to back up; Toothless did so, albeit with a huff that probably told Hiccup to make up his silly human mind already.

“Thank you,” said Hiccup, dodging between them for the stairs. Or attempting to, only for his father to grab his collar fast enough that his feet almost went out from under him and he was left rather dangling again. He might have made an undignified choking sound.

“Hiccup,” Stoick said, in the slow tone which meant that Hiccup was getting more patience than he really deserved right now. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not–” he managed to get to his feet again, but couldn’t turn around with his tunic pinned in place. “Going to let Elsa walk down here in her nightclothes and get changed in a room with no door, all right?”

Stoick sighed. “This really needs to stop, son.”

“What part?” said Hiccup dryly, rather expecting that the answer was ‘everything’. Toothless nudged his elbow, and Hiccup gave up and thrust the bundle in the dragon’s direction. “Go on, Toothless. Take this to Elsa.” The dragon looked at the bundle curiously, then sniffed it. “This. Elsa.” Hiccup pointed upstairs.

The fact that Toothless carefully took hold of the clothes in his mouth and started padding upstairs with them meant that he was officially easier to give orders to than the twins.

“Thank you.” Hiccup sighed. The hold on his collar was finally released, and he flattened it out as he turned to face his father. “We’re going to do this again,” he said flatly.

Stoick heaved the sort of huge sigh that only Stoick the Vast could really manage. “Hiccup, I know that while Elsa means a lot to you, you’ve said that you don’t... see her in that way. But you have to think about how your actions look.”

“Yes, the crowds of people who go through my bedroom every morning to critique my nightwear will be highly interested,” replied Hiccup. A part of him was aware that these were probably not the wisest words which he had ever chosen, but rather more of him was too annoyed to care. “Come on, Dad. _You_ know there’s nothing...” he blustered for a word. “ _Improper_ going on; I know there’s nothing improper going on; Elsa knows that there’s nothing improper going on. Isn’t that what matters?”

“Hiccup,” said Stoick, steering him with inexorable force down into a chair, “please listen to me.” He dropped to one knee, bringing them closer to eye-level than they usually managed. “You are the son of the chief, and one day you will be the chief. You have to be aware that your... actions can have repercussions.”

The level of discomfort in the room was probably only matched by the first time that Stoick had tried to sit Hiccup down for the ‘yaks and the chickens’ talk. Gobber, of all people, had needed to clear up a few things after that spectacular failure of communication. Hiccup tried not to grit his teeth. “Dad, you _do_ know that there’s nothing improper going on, right?” The slight hesitation was more than enough, and Hiccup groaned, slumping back in the chair.

“Hiccup, I understand,” said Stoick, “I really do.”

“I’m not so sure about that, Dad,” Hiccup replied. The words came out a bit more sharply than he had meant them to, and Hiccup grimaced, but reached up to rub his forehead. “You’ve got someone, when the nightmares come. Because they do come,” he added, knowing that he was right even before Stoick turned his eyes towards the ground. “And yes, I went to sleep beside Toothless and it meant that for the first night in some time I did not have nightmares, and I’m not going to apologise for that.”

He didn’t say aloud that it had only been _half_ the night that had been without nightmares, but it had been the half spent beneath Toothless’s wing. It was close enough to the truth. Hiccup looked at Stoick almost desperately, even as Stoick folded both of his hands around one of Hiccup’s.

“I know,” said Stoick, more softly. “And though I might not understand your bond with the dragon,” he pressed on before Hiccup could protest, “I respect it. I just need you to know that if anyone were to hear of this, if someone were to come in one morning with an emergency,” he said in a more pointed tone, “then things could be said about your conduct.”

“Run a dragon academy, no problem,” said Hiccup. “Sleep five feet away from someone with a dragon between us, unacceptable.” He knew that the bite had gone from his tone, though. Berk was not like Arendelle or the more southern kingdoms, with its royalty and associated rules, but they were all but singular among Vikings for having a hereditary chiefdom. It put Hiccup under watch in different ways. “It’s not about Elsa, Dad. It’s about Toothless. It’s just that...” he waved vaguely towards his bedroom. “For Elsa, it’s about Toothless as well. We’re both just working with what we have, Dad.”

He felt as if he was deflating as he spoke, and the last of his words came out almost wearily. Stoick squeezed his hand, gently for him but still enough to almost hurt over his knuckles.

“Would you object if it were Snotlout?” said Hiccup. But Snotlout was kin; perhaps that was different. “Or Fishlegs?” When Stoick went to speak, Hiccup made a pointed gesture towards the master bedroom, where Gobber was presumably avoiding the conversation. “Is it really just because she’s a girl?”

Woman, he immediately realised that he should have said. After Dragon Island, Elsa had just as much right as any of them to call herself an adult by the traditions of Berk. Most people had won that right against a Nadder or a Gronckle, even against a Terror or several. Hiccup, and the rest of the riders, were probably the only Vikings that could say that they had entered adulthood with the killing of a Red Death.

“You know what I’m trying to say, Hiccup,” said Stoick levelly.

Knowing did not make it seem any more ridiculous, but Hiccup did know. “I’ll talk to her,” he said, then at Stoick’s pointed look added: “again. If you make sure that she gets a proper door for her room?”

“We can work with that,” said Stoick.

He straightened up at footsteps on the stairs, and Hiccup turned sharply to see Toothless at the top of the stairs, Elsa just visible in the doorway behind him. The skirt that she was wearing was only knee-length, unusually short for her, though the shirt was at least long-sleeved. Toothless bounced down the stairs, rumbling, and Elsa followed barefoot and still looking cautiously around, something tucked under one arm.

“Good morning!” said Hiccup again, as cheerily as he could given the circumstances. “Everything all right?”

Elsa unrolled her bundle to reveal that it was another skirt, this one longer. There were teeth-marks in the fabric, and it looked like it had been slobbered on. “He tried,” she said simply.

“Well,” said Stoick, patting Hiccup on the shoulder. “Good luck washing that out, then.”

Hiccup did not even need to look up to know that the words had not been aimed at Elsa, and still could not help a relieved smile. This, he could handle. And hopefully Gobber would know a trick or two for getting dragon saliva out of wool.


	19. Chapter 19

Hailstones formed a crust on top of the snow, but for a while at least the weather was holding out and had a crisp, clear feel to it. It had rapidly become clear that Night Fury saliva was not easily removed from wool, and though Stoick had tried a couple of times to talk to Hiccup again, he was not in the mood for it. Dealing with Albrekt had been hard enough. That his father was more concerned with where Elsa was sleeping pushed it into the realm of the ridiculous.

He escaped to the smithy, Toothless following him with only the occasional pause to stick his nose into some snowdrift or other, and opened up the shutters to survey the leather which Gobber had cut for him. Getting at least one thing right for Snoggletog would be a start. He was just laying out the pieces when a knock sounded at the door, and he looked round to see Astrid waiting there.

“Were we supposed to be going flying today?” said Hiccup, sighing. Off the top of his head, he couldn’t even remember how many days were left to Snoggletog. “Sorry, not my best morning. Let me get Toothless’s saddle and I’ll be right with you.”

“No, you keep doing...” Astrid tilted her head, and Hiccup belatedly tried to stand in front of what he had been doing with as innocent an expression as possible. “Whatever it is you’re doing. I was just dropping by to let you know that my mother and I are going to run the traplines.”

Hiccup frowned. “This close to Snoggletog? That’s a two-day job, at least, in this snow.”

“Not with a Nadder,” she said, with a wicked smile. “I may have persuaded my mother to let Stormfly take us out to the lines, as long as she doesn’t eat any of the catches.”

“Oh, really?” He leant back against the workbench, folding his arms across his chest.

“What? You thought you were the only one who could take people out flying on dragons?” Astrid put one hand on her hip, daring him with her gaze, and Hiccup had to say that it felt good to bandy words and feel like a  _ dragon rider _ , not the son of the chief. This part of life was simpler. “Besides, we won’t even need to dress the kills out there. Stormfly can carry them back for us instead.”

“Well, just... be careful out there,” he said. “There’s a camp of probably very angry Wildlings now, considering that I dropped off a dead body with them last night. And...” he trailed off, catching sight of a flicker of something in the sky behind her. Dark specks against the pale blue sky. Hiccup grabbed the spyglass lying on the side and peered through it, Astrid stepping out of his way and shading her eyes beside him.

They did get birds over Berk, of course. Mostly the particularly brave ones, but birds all the same. This time, though, Hiccup looked through the spyglass to see what was most definitely a small group of Gronckles, vague outlines against the sky.

“There!” he said to Astrid, pushing the spyglass in her hand and pointing upwards. “Gronckles!”

She looked in the same direction. “I make it... four? Five?”

“It’s the first time they’ve been within sight of Berk,” said Hiccup. “And in daylight, too!” He had to admit that it was possible that they had been closer during the night, or even just above the clouds, but that would only have made it better. At least with the humans, he could talk them into being comfortable around the dragons – with the dragons, all that he had been able to do was wait and hope.

“Not exactly close to the ground,” said Astrid, “but yup. Definitely Gronckles.” She handed Hiccup back his spyglass, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good work, Dragon Master.”

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“Not until a better name comes along, no.”

It got a little better over the next few days. Not necessarily easy, even when he could concentrate on leather-working or working with Gobber to work a little more of the Gronckle iron into a belt buckle for his father for Snoggletog, but at least better. Stoick kept his word, finding a door for Elsa’s room in just a couple of days, and Hiccup agreed with her that Toothless could sleep in her room on any night that she wanted. It was strange the first time that he woke up to an empty space on the far side of the room, but on going downstairs and seeing the rear half of Toothless sticking out of Elsa’s room had been enough to make him smile again.

It was a few days before Snoggletog when Hiccup woke to the roaring of a dragon on the rooftops. Hookfang, his sleep-slurred brain supplied after a few blinks. Before the inevitable call for his help came, he waved Toothless over and managed to get to a standing position on his bed, balancing on his one foot, and forced open his window with a shower of snow. Well, at least a cold wet bed would put any ideas of going back to sleep out of his mind.

It was snowing again, but lightly enough that most of Berk would just ignore it, and Hiccup simply shaded his eyes to look out. Sure enough, Hookfang was visible as a glowing shape in the darkness, perched on the roof of the Jorgenson’s house, but just as Hiccup was rolling his eyes and preparing to climb down, another, sharper, roar cut through the air.

“Stormfly?” said Hiccup, half to Toothless and half to himself. He craned his neck to look further down the village, and could only conclude that the vague blue shape visible through the snow was indeed Stormfly. She probably wasn’t just trying to get Hookfang to shut up, either. Hiccup looked back to Toothless again. “This isn’t good, is it?”

He dropped to his backside on the bed, grabbed yesterday’s clothes off the floor and just pulled them on over his nightshirt. As he was reaching for his leg, he heard the howl of a Gronckle joining what was now becoming a whole dawn chorus outside, and just climbed on Toothless’s back instead, grabbing his cane in passing.

This time, Toothless took the stairs a little more quickly, and Hiccup ended up clinging on in a rather less dignified manner. He did manage not to fall off, though, which was about the only good thing that could be said so far about this morning as Stoick slammed open the door to the main bedroom, with his tunic just as hastily thrown on to judge by his bare feet and lack of belt.

“What in Odin’s name is going on, Hiccup?”

He wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or impressed that his father actually expected him to know, and settled for not having time for either. “Just on my way to ask them,” Hiccup said, standing up for a moment to pull open the door. At least it wasn’t too windy outside. “Come on, bud.”

“Hiccup–” Stoick began, but another roar from Hookfang made Hiccup look round to see plumes of smoke in the sky.

Toothless whined, deep in his throat, and looked over his shoulder to Hiccup before bounding out into the snow, going straight for the rooves. That was not what Hiccup had expected. With a yell, he clutched for a saddle that wasn’t there and settled for grabbing Toothless’s shoulders, holding on tight with his legs until Toothless levelled out on the top of the nearest roof, tail lashing through the snow.

“Meatlug?” Fishlegs waded out into the snow, voice high and frantic. “Meatlug, baby, come down! What’s wrong?”

“Stormfly!” shouted Astrid in turn, from the direction of her house.

Well, at least Hiccup had not been the only one woken up by dragons, to judge by the fact that the other riders were now stumbling out of their houses. Unfortunately, though, that meant that the rest of Berk would probably be only moments behind. Marvellous.

Getting a slightly better seat, he gave Toothless a slight nudge, and they bounded across the rooves towards the other dragons. Hiccup muttered a curse as Hookfang finally took off, wings pounding at the air and sending snow flurrying around them.

“Hookfang!” he called, as sternly as he could. “Halt!”

“Yeah, Hookfang, get your butt back down here right now!” Snotlout shouted, from somewhere at ground level.

They came to a stop on the roof of the house next to the Jorgenson’s, just in time for the upstairs window to be flung open and the owner to peer out. It was not even near sunrise yet, the world still dark, and Hiccup just tried to look as apologetic as he could by the light of Hookfang.

“Sorry. Don’t worry, got this all under control.”

Rockbloom scowled at him and closed the window again. Even Hiccup would admit that he probably wasn’t the most commanding sight right now, even if the Night Fury might help.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hookfang! Calm down!”

It couldn’t be eels, not with all of them going. Sparks in the distance caught his attention, and though he could not be sure in the gloom he had a strong suspicion that it was Barf and Belch. All of them, then. He could feel Toothless twitching and stirring, wings flicking in the air on either side of Hiccup, but without his tail at least he did not seem inclined to try to take to the air.

Hiccup stretched up as far as he could in his seat and stretched out his hand. From the way that Hookfang paused in the air, flames dimming, it was clear that he had seen it; he leant forwards, nose reaching out towards Hiccup’s hand, but then at the last minute snatched away again and roared into the air with another billowing roll of flame, eyes nothing more than slits despite the darkness.

“Argh!” Hiccup ducked, throwing his arms over his head, as the flames passed close enough for him to feel the heat.

“Hookfang!” Snotlout snapped, from somewhere out of sight. “Cut that out!”

“Not particularly helping, Snotlout!”

“No, no, no, Meatlug! Bring them back!”

He turned at Fishlegs’s anguished voice. Meatlug was rising upwards, with Fishlegs jumping beneath her and trying to grab at her feet, and as she barrelled forwards Hiccup realised that she had Skyfire and Silversnap in her mouth, held gently in place.

The barrelling didn’t look like it was going to stop. Hiccup ducked again, this time trying to avoid several tonnes of dragon, but did not get low enough. Meatlug clipped his shoulder hard enough to pitch him off Toothless’s back, hitting the roof shoulder-first and sliding fast down its surface, snow billowing around him, until he hit the snowdrift below with an undignified grunt.

The cold hit him like a wall. Hiccup gasped at the slap of it, cutting straight through the single layer of clothes which he had dragged on without really thinking about the consequences. He managed to twist over onto his back, but as soon as he tried to sit up he felt himself slip deeper, with more snow falling onto his head.

Above him, Toothless chirped. Hiccup sighed, and tried to wave him down to give him some help getting out of the snowdrift. The only response he got was another rumble.

“Not helping!” Hiccup snapped. He pushed himself up high enough to look around and take stock of where the nearest path was likely to be. He flailed in the appropriate direction, not even sure how much distance he was making up, when a pair of hands wrapped around his arm and he was yanked out through the snow.

He opened his mouth to yell, and got a mouthful of snow for his trouble. The next thing that he knew, he was on his backside on a more trampled, denser sort of snow, spitting out cold water and already starting to shiver.

Astrid let go of his arm and stepped back, putting her hands on her hips. “What are you doing?” she said.

Not sure whether or not to dignify that with an answer, Hiccup just looked round and gestured for Toothless to join him on the ground. Once again, Toothless ignored him, instead barking softly before looking up to the sky again.

“Really not helping,” said Hiccup. There was no way he was getting back to his house on his own, either. Planting his hands on the ground, he turned back to Astrid. “Well, I was trying to figure out what was going on, but now I’m thinking about enjoying the marvellous Berkian weather for a bit.”

She rolled her eyes. “Honestly.” Stepping around, she put her hands under his shoulders before he could protest, and hauled him back upright once again. Considering it was stand or end up back on his ass, Hiccup hastily tried to get his balance. “I  _ meant _ what are you doing in the snow?”

“Meatlug knocked me down,” he admitted. Realising that the roaring had stopped, he looked upwards once again. “Where has she gone?”

With a pained look, Astrid tucked one arm across her chest, keeping the other by Hiccup’s shoulder as she stepped in front of him again. “Yeah, that would have been my second question.”

“Oh, Thor.” Hiccup took a deep breath, though his attempt to let it out turned into a shiver. “All right. Let me just get back home and get Toothless’s tail. Then we can–”

“Then you can put on some dry clothes, unless you want to freeze solid,” said Astrid dubiously. Hiccup did his best to look unimpressed. “I’m just saying.”

“Hiccup! Oh, thank Thor, you’re here.” Fishlegs turned the corner so quickly that he almost slammed into the pair of them, and had his arms reached out such that for one moment Hiccup thought that he was about to be hugged. “Hiccup, what’s happening to our dragons?”

“I’m going to find out,” he said quickly. “I just need to get back and get some dry clothes on. Toothless!” he looked up at Toothless, and jabbed a finger down at the snow next to him. Finally, with a disconsolate look at the sky, Toothless climbed down the side of the roof and padded into place beside Hiccup. “ _ Thank you _ ,” he sighed. As Astrid finally lowered her arms, he sat down on Toothless’s back again, grimacing at the feel of half-frozen cloth on his skin.

“Hiccup, are you sure–” Astrid began, only for Tuffnut to barrel into her at full speed, sending them both to the ground. Ruffnut followed a moment later, tripping over them both and sprawling face-first into the snow. “Tuffnut!”

“Ow! Owowow!”

For a moment Hiccup could not work out quite why Tuffnut was yelping, then he saw the way that Astrid was bending his wrist back on itself. There was a moment of flailing limbs, and then Tuffnut was thrown aside and Astrid got back to her feet again, scowling down at the twins. “Muttonheads,” she said decisively.

“Hiccup!” Ruffnut, still on her hands and knees, ignored her brother nursing his wrist and fixed her attention on Hiccup instead. To judge by the figures starting to appear at other doorways, she was not the only one. “Hiccup, where are our dragons?”

“I’m going to find out, as soon as people stop asking me,” said Hiccup. It came out a bit harsher than he had intended, and he bit back the rising anger. At least this time there was not a headache to go along with it. He swung his left leg across Toothless’s back and wondered faintly how the others had coped for so long without any sort of saddle. “Come on, Toothless.”

Rather than give anyone the chance to interrupt again, he clicked his tongue and pressed his knee to Toothless’s side. With a muted rumble, Toothless bounded back towards their home again, with Hiccup just about clinging on. He half-dismounted, half-fell into the door, and swung himself back inside to be grabbed by the shoulders and quickly released again.

“Hiccup! What have you been doing?” said Gobber, wiping his hand on his shirt.

“Swimming in the snow,” he replied, not wholly dishonestly. It didn’t stop both Gobber and Stoick, further inside the house, from giving him exasperated looks. “I’m working on it. Let me get some clean clothes, and Toothless’s tail.”

He ducked under Gobber’s arm, having become more than adept enough by now at getting around on one foot as long as he had the walls and bannister to assist him. Gobber just sighed, went to close the door, and was headbutted out of the way by Toothless on his way through instead.

“I give up,” he said. “Stoick?”

Stoick re-emerged from his room, this time dressed and straightening his helmet, and looked at Hiccup sternly. “I hear that the noise has finally stopped.”

“Yes, that happens when the dragons all fly off,” said Hiccup, waving at the distance then regretting it and grabbing the balustrade again. He reached the top of the stairs, swapped to the wall, and grabbed his foot as soon as it was within reach. “I don’t know what’s gotten into them, but I need to find out.”

They couldn’t be moving all that fast, not with Meatlug among them. It felt a little mean to think that, but it was true. Once again bipedal, Hiccup started to strip off his wet clothes, at least until a creak on the stairs made him spin round, clutching his tunic to his chest as if to try to protect his modesty.

Toothless cocked his head. Sighing, Hiccup threw his tunic on the floor and got back to the rest of his clothes.

“What do you mean,” said Stoick, voice carrying easily through the house, “the dragons all flew off?”

“Hookfang started roaring, the others joined in, then they all flew off,” said Hiccup. Could they have been reacting to a threat? Another dragon, or an attack from Alvin? But for a moment, at least, Hookfang’s eyes had been so tightly constricted there had been almost no pupil there at all. “I need to follow them. Did I leave Toothless’s tail downstairs?”

He could hear some clattering, both wooden and metallic, as someone hunted under things. “Under the table,” said Gobber, not sounding in the least bit surprised.

“Thank you! The others might well–” even from upstairs, he could hear the knock at the door. “Be right behind me.”

“Just  _ open _ it,” snapped Astrid, and the door was flung open again. Yet another wave of cold air filled the house.

With a sigh, Hiccup grabbed his cloak and returned to the stop of the stairs, peering over Toothless’s shoulder towards the floor below. Astrid stood in the doorway, the others crowding around her.

“Hiccup!” said Astrid, hands cupped around her mouth.

“I’m here, I’m here!” He looked at the stairwell, then edged over to the side in the hopes that Toothless would pass. Toothless, in keeping with the rest of the morning, instead sat down heavily. “I may be stuck up here, but I’m here,” said Hiccup flatly.

It had been some years since he had slid down the balustrade, after more than one incident in which he had fallen off it on the way down. And he had not tried it since the addition of the metal foot. Hiccup swung a foot over the bannister, and just as his father started to protest carefully slid down the wood, not quite managing to stop himself before he reached the end. He fell off into the air, grabbing the newel in an attempt to keep himself somewhere close to upright, and turned to see the others looking at him with mingled bewilderment and, in at least Snotlout’s case, mild disdain.

“All right,” said Hiccup, straightening up. “Let’s get going.”

He almost asked Astrid to come with him, but there was every chance that he would be faster by himself. Dry and bundled up again, he did up Toothless’s saddle with shaking hands, and took off into the dim pre-dawn with his heart pounding in his chest.

They could not have been heading south, over the island, and all of the other dragons that had been spotted had been heading north-west as well. Perhaps it was some sort of migration, like birds heading south for the winter, but if so then it was in the wrong direction. For lack of any better ideas, Hiccup pressed himself low to Toothless’s back, and they shot north-west so fast that the clouds were ripped open by the tips of Toothless’s wings.

The air was so cold that it scraped over his skin. The other dragons did not have that much of a head start, he was sure, and he should have been able to catch up to Meatlug in mere minutes. But it fast became clear that wherever the dragons had gone, it was not towards Dragon Island, and Hiccup drew up to a halt in the air again.

“Toothless?” he said. “Any ideas?”

Toothless looked back over his shoulder with a rumble, but it wasn’t quite so comforting as it usually was.

“We’re gonna have to fly a search pattern,” said Hiccup, more quietly. With any luck, they should still be able to find the other dragons in the air. With a tilt of his body, he pulled Toothless round to the left, and started their first sweep across the sea.

He doubted that the darkness helped. In summer, it would have been light for hours, but the days were at their shortest and the sun was still below the horizon. As they tacked back and forth, as a ship would search in open water, the world slowly lightened around them, until the grey light was enough to pick out smaller rocks poking through the surface of the sea below. The best tell-tale would have been a blaze of fire, especially if Hookfang chose to light himself up again, but there was nothing as far as he could see.

For now, at least, the skies were clear. “Come on, bud,” said Hiccup. He shifted his weight, shifted the position of Toothless’s tail, and they climbed into the sky like a lost scrap of the night.

Toothless’s wings beat hard at the air around them. When his eyes watered, Hiccup wiped them with the back of his hand, and told himself that it was only the wind that was to blame. As faint wisps of cloud started to appear around them, and the horizon grew almost painfully bright with the coming sunrise, they levelled out, and hung in the air while Hiccup surveyed the water below.

Nothing. Hiccup’s gut twisted, heart pounding in his chest. The only movement that he could see was the breaking of waves, without even seabirds to show that there was life.

“No,” he said. “No!”

A frustrated scream ripped out of him, and Toothless bucked in the sky so harshly that Hiccup had to grab hold of the saddle again. Panting, Hiccup slumped down again, and closed his eyes against the helplessness that welled in him.

“I’m sorry, guys,” he muttered. For one wild moment, he considered hiding out among the clouds and the sky, but could not face the thought of people not knowing where he was either. “Come on,” he added to Toothless. “Let’s head home.”

At least Mildew and his followers were not there to gloat as Hiccup came in to land beside his house again. He had seen the bonfire up by Mildew’s farm, unable to look away, and figures up there besides. Probably celebrating that the dragons had left of their own accord.

Astrid was the first one out of the house, before Hiccup had even dismounted, running through the knee-deep snow. “Where are they?” she said immediately.

“There’s... no sign of them,” Hiccup replied. His throat felt tight, and trying to clear it did not quite work. “Wherever they went, it wasn’t towards Dragon Island.”

The fierce focus on Astrid’s face slipped, and it was like Hiccup lost a little more of his ability to breathe when he realised that there was fear beneath it. She swallowed, and the mask did not fall back into place in quite the same way as the others came up behind her, Stoick pushing through the rest.

“Hiccup! You’re all right!”

“Yeah,” said Hiccup, feeling like he was lying as he slid off Toothless’s back. The cold didn’t seem quite real. “They didn’t head back here, then.”

“No!” Snotlout snarled. “And when I find out who scared them off–”

Hookfang should have still been resting, with his injured wing. Wherever they were going, Hiccup hoped that he was still strong enough to get there. “Gobber,” he said quickly, before Snotlout could remember or bring up the same thing, “have you heard of any dragon migrations before? Is there anything recorded?”

“Not in any of Bork’s notes,” said Gobber. “Though I can’t recall any attacks around Snoggletog in the past.”

“There haven’t been any.” That was one thing that he had seen in his mother’s diaries, as well as his own. Every Snoggletog, Vikings had been grateful that there had been no attack, offering thanks to various gods and goddesses for lack of knowing who could really be behind it, and never put together the pattern. Maybe it was the dragons themselves, and not the protective influence of the gods. “They’re always gone, for at least six days.” Never as much as half a moon, though, and the attacks after Snoggletog had always been smaller and more frequent, with fewer dragons ever seen. The Night Fury had kept coming, though, every year.

“Where have our dragons gone, Hiccup?” said Fishlegs.

He didn’t have an answer, as desperately as he wanted to. All of them seemed to be staring at him now, in various stages of desperation, not just Astrid and Fishlegs but the twins and Snotlout and even his father. Gobber looked less frightened than some of the others, but no less uncertain, and as the keeper of Bork’s records ever since he had returned to Berk, he should have been the one to know if any migration had been seen before.

“It doesn’t matter that they’ve gone,” Stoick said, taking Hiccup by surprise. His father squared his shoulders and looked around with the air of chief upon him, even if he was not wearing the cloak. “What matters is that you need to trust them to come back. Now go home, all of you, and help your parents with the Snoggletog celebrations. I daresay they’ll be glad to actually see you around.” When no-one moved, he frowned. “Go!”

They scattered, Astrid hesitating the longest before leaving and looking straight at Hiccup for a moment before he did so. He reached up to rub his forehead, and waited until the others had all left before looking between Stoick and Gobber. “I couldn’t see them anywhere,” he said. “I’m sorry, I looked, but–”

“Don’t worry about it, son,” said Stoick, just a little quickly. “If the dragons stuck around this long, it means that they had a reason to be here. Which should mean they’ll be back.”

Hiccup caught the conditional that had not been there when his father had been addressing the others, but did not comment on it. “I hope so,” he said.

“Now, come on. It’s not just the others that have to get things ready for Snoggletog, you know.” Stoick looked at him pointedly, until Hiccup finally began to wade his way back towards the front door. “Besides, it’s not the time of year to be outdoors.”

That sentiment, Hiccup could appreciate, even if the thought of a roof over him was not the most welcome of ones right now. If he took some supplies, part of his mind whispered, he could search for the dragons for longer. Check island to island, if he had to. But there were too many islands, spread over too much sea, and even in the summer it would get cold at night. At this time of year, it would be nigh on suicidal.

He would have to trust the dragons to come back on their own. And, for that matter, hope that they had been given anywhere near enough reason to. Hiccup would not wholly blame them if they left, not after everything that they – especially Meatlug with her eggs, and Stormfly with her scars – had been through.

As he reached the door, it was carefully opened again, and Elsa looked out. Hiccup felt relief wash over him, and before she could even speak he all put lunged in, throwing his arms around her and holding onto her tightly. Elsa stiffened up, almost pulling away, but caught herself at the last minute.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, right in her ear. “I just can’t see you disappear as well.”

He squeezed his eyes closed for a moment, even as Stoick cleared his throat pointedly behind them. Then Elsa’s hand patted him on the back, and finally Hiccup found it in himself to let go and step back again. She was still looking at him warily, for which he could not really blame her, as he kept his hands on her shoulders for a moment.

“I can’t fly away,” she said. Her voice sounded tight, but Hiccup had too much of a weight in his chest to untangle the words too much.

“No kidnapping Toothless,” he said, trying to make it sound like a joke. Elsa smiled slightly. She raised her hand as if she was about to take Hiccup’s, then curled it to her chest instead. “Just... just stay here, all right?”

She finally met his eyes, and nodded, and Hiccup let out a sigh of relief all over again. Then Toothless headbutted him in the small of his back and, with a glance over his shoulder, Hiccup stepped into the house to free up the doorway again.

“Come on,” said Stoick. “Snoggletog. Only got a few days left, after all.”

At least it would be something. Hiccup got further out of the way as his father and Gobber came back into the house again. “Yes, Dad.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: Serious animal injury (due to human action) and offscreen animal death. Graphic content, equivalent to veterinary or Animal Cops-type shows. For those who have seen the TV series, it's the grim logical extension of what we see in _Zippleback Down_.
> 
> This is the darkest chapter of the fic, and also the nadir of it. I'm not gonna be pushing further down from here, I promise; it'll start on the up.

This year, the Snoggletog decorations looked too bright. Shields were being moved to the outside of houses, boughs of evergreens decorated doorways, and the better-off families drew out the glass spheres which Johann knew were liked here, setting candles within them to cast bright colours across the doorways. The tree was slowly built in front of the Great Hall, wood stained green and studded with nails to glitter in the firelight. Once it had been a real tree, but somewhere along the line someone had realised that they could build a wooden one taller than any real tree could be found, and so the tradition had changed.

Stoick made sure that Hiccup and Toothless were seen helping with the construction of the higher branches. Hiccup might have felt better about it had he not seen the jealous look on Snotlout’s face.

They flew by themselves, in the grey pre-dawn and after the sun had set, higher and faster than they had been able to with the others. It didn’t make up for it, though. Even without their dragons, the others still returned to the academy, but this time it was to train with weapons while Hiccup and Elsa sat to the side and worked on the Book of Dragons. Or, at least, Hiccup worked on the Book of Dragons, while Elsa alternated her attention between the sparring and the writing, occasionally scratching Toothless on the head when he tried to stick his nose into their laps.

Hiccup glanced up to see Astrid casually taking a wooden sword to Snotlout as he scrambled to retrieve his own training weapon. Every time that his hand came close, she would kick the sword away and reward Snotlout with another whack from her sword. The twins were laughing, not entirely unexpectedly.

“You know, Hiccup,” said Astrid, getting her toe under the wooden sword and flicking it into the air. She grabbed it perfectly, and Snotlout rolled away with a surprising clarity of thought. “You should really start training again. Don’t want to lose your skills.”

“Yes, the fighting skills for which I am so renowned,” Hiccup replied, barely missing a beat as he dipped the quill into the ink beside him again. “Thor knows I wouldn’t want to lose that.”

“You can still shoot a bow,” said Astrid. “Hey, maybe you could learn to fire from dragon-back.”

That actually gave him a moment’s pause. “Eh, the draw might be a bit hard. Shortbow, maybe. Or a crossbow,” he said. Crossbows were not much used on Berk, because of the length of time it took to fire one and because bows were relatively easier to make. But they were not unheard of.

“There you go, then.” Astrid pointed a sword at him, her voice warm and probably meant to be encouraging. “I’ve heard of archers who can shoot from horseback, but I doubt there’s been anyone who shoots from dragonback before.”

There had been something just slightly frenetic about her ever since the dragons had flown away. Without even looking round, she flicked her wooden sword to catch Ruffnut in the abdomen while the other girl was not paying attention. Ruffnut doubled over, Tuffnut cackled, and another flick of Astrid’s wooden sword took the helmet right off his head.

“Do you know how to fight, Elsa?” said Astrid.

Hiccup felt Elsa stiffen where she sat, and saw her hands clench in her skirt. He was just about to reply when she cleared her throat and gave Astrid a very polite sort of smile. “I have never used a sword.”

“You used a spear on Dragon Island, right?” Astrid nodded to Fishlegs, who had remained closer to the armoury door and out of Astrid’s reach. “See if we’ve got a couple of staffs in there, will you?”

They certainly did, unless someone had managed to make even more of a mess than Hiccup would have predicted in the time since it had been him tidying it. “Astrid, I appreciate that–”

“You could let Elsa answer herself, you know,” said Astrid, a little bit more pointedly than before. Hiccup blinked in surprise. With a slight smirk, Astrid flicked her hair out of her eyes, and tossed both wooden swords in the direction of the twins. One hit the ground, while both of them grabbed hold of the other and attempted to wrestle over it. “Want to come join?”

There was something else beneath her words, Hiccup could hear. _Join in_ , she meant, and Hiccup’s irritation waned when he realised what Astrid was trying to do. He sat back against the wall and, when Elsa looked to him, shrugged. “It’s up to you,” he said.

Elsa’s smile softened to something more real, then slipped down from the table and stepped around Toothless. She did not look like a fighter, with no armour and her long skirt, but Hiccup had seen Vikings in their nightshirts fight dragons before now. Fishlegs handed the staffs to Astrid, who promptly tossed one in Elsa’s direction. Elsa plucked it easily from the air and shifted to hold it in both hands.

Hiccup watched warily, setting his quill aside for a moment so as not to get ink on the page. Astrid dropped down into a fighting stance, while Elsa bent her knees slightly and eyed the staffs. Even the twins fell quiet, Tuffnut holding Ruffnut in a headlock, as the two women began to circle each other.

With a rumble, Toothless lifted up his head, then cocked it. “Yeah,” muttered Hiccup. “Me too.”

Astrid struck first, a testing slash downwards which Elsa blocked two-handed and stepped away from. The other end of Astrid’s staff flicked up again, but Elsa slid away, then sliced sideways with her own staff. Twisting, Astrid blocked the blow, then spun both staffs around to slam them to the floor. She thrust her elbow upwards, and Elsa jerked backwards, the tip of her staff scraping along the floor.

Astrid struck again, this time with a thrust, and Elsa spun away so fast that Snotlout had to scramble out of her way. She bought her staff up with a hearty smack on Astrid’s upper arm, then froze, horror filling her expression.

“I am so sorry,” she said, backing away. “I did not mean to strike you.”

“Why do you think I asked for staffs, not spears?” Astrid grinned. She dropped her arm back, still half-circling. “Bruises don’t count. Come on.” She reached over and tapped her staff against Elsa’s, just lightly. “Give it a go.”

For a moment, Elsa hesitated, but then her stance hardened up again and she gripped her staff more firmly. Astrid’s next strike was lightning-fast, cracking out towards Elsa’s shins, and Elsa barely managed to block it before Astrid whipped the staff straight up against the blade of Elsa’s hand. With a hiss, Elsa released her grip, and had to duck Astrid’s shoulder height blow before she could regain both hand-holds once again.

Hiccup was surprised, all the same. Concentration had driven nervousness from Elsa’s features, and she looked almost happy as she jabbed upwards with her staff and forced Astrid to defend instead. He wondered whether it was like sparring with her younger sister, as she said that she had once done as children. Or tried to do, perhaps.

Astrid knocked the blow away, but it opened up her right side clearly enough that even Hiccup could see it, and Elsa did not miss the opportunity. The butt of her staff whipped round and cracked into Astrid’s ribs, hard enough for Astrid to stagger back a pace, and Hiccup winced.

But Astrid laughed, and without pausing slammed the butt of her staff into Elsa’s leg, just above the ankle. Elsa’s foot went out from under her, and she fell heavily, dropping the staff as she reached out to catch herself. She looked more surprised than anything else, grabbing for the staff only to have Astrid kick it out of her reach.

“Not bad,” said Astrid. She swapped the staff to her left hand, and reached down with her right to help Elsa up. “I mean, you’ve got no form, and I’m guessing you picked it up as you went along. But not bad.”

Elsa hesitated for a moment before taking Astrid’s hand and allowing herself to be pulled upright again. Her smile was slightly sheepish as she brushed snow off her dress, and Hiccup caught the moment where she checked her wrists to make sure that her new trollwort bracelets were safely in place. “You fight very well,” she said. “Better than anyone... I have seen.”

The way that Astrid frowned, Hiccup suspected that she was about to start enquiring in exactly what circumstances Elsa had learnt to fight, and he quickly put aside his book and slid down to the ground. “All right, guys! Very good! Now, how about we head home for some lunch, huh?”

They all turned to look at him, and though he tried not to look too long at Elsa he saw the relief in her face. Astrid bent to pick up the second staff from the floor.

Before any of them had time to answer him, however, there were running footsteps outside, and Hiccup turned just as Runa rounded the corner of the doorway and skidded down the ramp to the academy.

“Hiccup!” she said, and Hiccup froze in bewilderment. “I need your help. There’s a dragon in the Wildlands.”

She must have known that they were all in the arena, of course, but that still did not feel to Hiccup like it explained why she had immediately turned to _him_. It was a long moment before he managed any sort of response at all, and unfortunately it came out as: “What?”

“Deadly Nadder,” said Runa. She was still breathing hard as she jogged across the open space towards Hiccup, flatly ignoring the rest of them. “It’s in a snapper. A league south of the south-westernmost trapping point.”

The trapping point was almost half a summer day’s walk from Berk, further even than the cove, and Hiccup was struck by the bizarre thought that he was lucky that Runa had never found the cove itself. But that was gone in an instant; Runa would have been running for nearly two hours to get back, and Snappers had been built to kill.

“Astrid, come with me,” he said. Astrid, who had been walking towards them both, looked surprised. “I’ll need someone who knows Nadders. The rest of you,” he turned to the others, raising his voice, “get to Gobber, tell him what’s happened and to put together what he might have as medicine. I’ll be back to get him if we need him. Runa.” He looked Astrid’s mother in the eyes. “Thank you.”

With a slight toss of his head, he gestured for Toothless to stand up, and set about tightening the buckles on the saddle which he had not bothered to fully remove. Toothless huffed and shuffled, butting against Hiccup’s shoulder, then turning to chirp at Astrid as she drew closer.

“Are you sure I’m the best person to come with you?” she said. “You could just get Gobber straight away.”

“You’re the best with Nadders. You know Stormfly,” he replied. Toothless obediently raised one forepaw to let Hiccup check the last straps, then lowered his shoulders so that Hiccup could slide easily into the saddle.

Astrid’s lips pressed tightly together. “I did.”

This was an argument for which he did not have time. Hiccup tucked himself forwards in the saddle and clipped his left foot into the stirrup. “Astrid, please. I need you on this one,” he said, voice softening a little.

Finally, she nodded, and turned to toss both staffs back in Snotlout’s general direction. “Fishlegs, axe!” When he hesitated, she sighed pointedly. “Fishlegs!”

He picked it up from where it had been resting against the wall, and scurried over with it extended handle-first. Astrid snatched it from his hands, nicking one of his fingers on the way through, but Fishlegs did not complain as she attached it to her belt and then turned to climb into place on Toothless as well. As they took off, Runa watched with grim eyes, and nodded just slightly before stepping out of the way to give them a clear shot at the door.

 

 

 

 

 

What would have taken hours on the ground took only minutes in the sky. Hiccup barely had time to turn over in his mind what it was that Runa would come to fetch him, still only a handful of moons since the fight with the Red Death. Especially when it would mean running for so long, and abandoning any day’s hunting. There was certainly no time for him to ask Astrid about it, not before they were drawing close to the traplines and Hiccup took them lower, slowing down and scanning for the sight of a dragon beneath the snow-topped trees.

The wind shifted, and Toothless stiffened, flaps rising and head turning. “Go on, bud,” said Hiccup. It would not surprise him if Toothless could see or sense what he and Astrid could not.

He let Toothless guide them down, shifting the tail to follow the dragon’s movements, and finally letting them drop down through the trees to the ground below.

He could still see Runa’s tracks on the otherwise virgin snow. “Good work,” he said, running his hand over Toothless’s head as he unclipped his foot and slid down out of the saddle. Astrid crunched down on the opposite side. “Come on. Let’s go by foot from here.”

“Do you even have a plan?” said Astrid.

“Find the Nadder, befriend it, see how bad its injuries are,” he replied. Hopefully with less fear than there had been with Toothless, but just maybe with something like as much success. Injuries to dragons were most often fatal because they could not feed, but food could be provided in Berk while they healed. He started along the trail that Runa had left. “Gobber’s already told me how to unset these traps. I’ve helped make them.”

The last few words came out touched with regret, and he tightened his hand on the head of his cane. It had mostly been the pins and small mechanisms, the fiddly bits that were harder to do with a hook or just with larger hands. Gobber had been the one to deal with the large plates that had made up the teeth. But both of them had needed to sharpen them, and Hiccup had seen them tested on mutton and yak meat.

“Well,” said Astrid, “we’re going to get this one out.”

He gave her a grateful smile, and slowed in his steps as they came to a small slope and he saw the trees thin out ahead of them. Holding a hand up for Astrid and Toothless to hang back, Hiccup edged up to see a small clearing, with a particularly large pine tree provided some cover under which a snapper trap had been placed. In the trap, just as Runa had warned, was a Deadly Nadder.

It was a little smaller than Stormfly, to Hiccup’s eye, red with an orange belly but the same creamy horns. One of its wings had been caught in the jaws of the snapper, stretched out above its head, and blood had run down it in torrents to dry brownish-black. Even from a distance, Hiccup could see that the membrane was hugely torn, the ulna and radius both broken and the flesh almost severed, and that the part projecting from the top of the trap was starting to blacken and die.

He took a small step from behind the tree where he stood, and the Nadder’s head snapped up. It hissed, flashing its teeth, and turned its head to one side, then the other, as it looked him over. Hoping that it responding at all was a good sign, Hiccup edged forward again, pushing his cloak back over his shoulders to show that he was not armed.

“It’s all right there, boy,” he said soothingly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The Nadder bared its teeth again, its free wing slapping against the ground, and shuffled backwards slightly within the jaws of the trap. It tore at the flesh again, and Hiccup winced at the fresh blood that he saw welling up.

“You going to let us help you?” he said, still in the same way. Hiccup extended his hand, facing up at first, then slowly turned it so that the palm was outwards instead, in the way that he had greeted the other dragons. “I can open that trap, you know.”

“Does it really help to talk to yourself?” said Astrid. At any other time, it might have been amusing to see her peering out from behind one of the trees, but as Toothless looked out from behind her the Nadder shrieked, harsh and guttural.

Hiccup winced from the sound of it, and quickly stepped in front of the Nadder, who was now tugging against the trap and sending rushes of blood down its wing. He could definitely see bone in there. “No! No, no, no, it’s all right, it’s all right.” He hurried closer, reaching out, but the Nadder turned its head and spat fire in his direction.

Without thinking, Hiccup dropped down to one knee, covering his head with his hands and closing his eyes, half-expecting a second blast to follow. When it did not, he cautiously looked up again to see the Nadder watching him with its mouth open and its flanks heaving. The ground at its feet was torn up, faeces mingled with the snow, and it had to have been there for days. Hiccup slowly straightened up, and showed the Nadder his empty palms once again.

“We aren’t going to hurt you,” he said. His eyes travelled over the wing again. “Astrid, we’re going to need Gobber on this one.” His voice did not change in tone, and he did not look away from the Nadder. “This is too big. I’m going to need Toothless over here to reset the trap, and then I need you to stay with him while I get Gobber.”

“Him? Oh, the Nadder,” said Astrid. “You guessed male _why_?”

“It’s a fifty-fifty chance,” snapped Hiccup, with a glance back over his shoulder.  The flicker of annoyance faded when he saw that Astrid’s hands were shaking. He took a deep breath and looked to the Nadder again, watching as its mouth slowly closed. Once again, he reached out with his left hand. “We did this. Let us undo it.”

The Nadder huffed at him, flicking its free wing, and turned its head away. Pained, Hiccup curled his fingers back in and lowered his arm, falling back a step.

“I think a bit of respect might help here,” said Astrid. Hiccup was about to reply that had plenty of respect for dragons, but instead whirled as he heard Astrid drawing her axe. Protests rose in his throat, and he heard the Nadder building to roar again, but Astrid hefted the axe in both hands and swung it hard against the nearest tree.

It bit deep into the wood, staying there even as she pulled away, the branches of the tree shaking above her head from the force of her blow. The Nadder fell silent again, turning its head to the other side and then back with its gaze on Astrid as she strode over.

She walked right up to the Nadder, meeting its gaze, then stepped round into its blind spot. It sniffed at her, craning forwards until she stepped a little closer again, then snorted and bowed its head a little. Astrid extended her hand, and the Nadder nudged forwards to rest its head against her palm.

“Respect,” said Hiccup quietly.

When Astrid looked round, though, she looked more contrite than anything else. “Well,” she said. “I don’t think Stormfly would have let me get too close if she’d minded that I’d thrown axes at her.”

They had all fought the dragons, of course. Well, not Hiccup; from the beginning he had been feeding them and mucking them out and probably seeming much less dangerous than any of the others, as far as the dragons were concerned. But Astrid had fought them all, and Stormfly in particular had been too fast for the others to really handle.

Astrid looked back to the Nadder again, and reached to cup its jaw instead. It jerked its head away for a moment, then she pressed her hand to its skin and it let out a breath that was almost a sigh. She gently stroked its skin, then caught Hiccup’s eye and gave a minute shake of her head. “His skin’s really cold.”

Dragons might have been reptiles, but with fire inside them they usually ran hotter than humans did. Hiccup wasn’t sure what being cold meant, but he doubted that it was anything good. Swallowing, he waved Toothless over, and Toothless padded through the snow with his tail twitching and his head low, eyes fixed on the Nadder. The Nadder hissed, and Toothless stiffened up, but Astrid started to make hushing noises and the tension in the air faded.

“All right, bud,” said Hiccup. “I’m going to need a bit of help here.”

Traps were designed to be hard to open, either through having fiddly parts or through being strong. Snappers fell into the latter category, and when they were designed to be able to take on Nightmares and Zipplebacks it took a lot of strength, properly directed, to pry one open.

As Toothless came closer, he flared his wings slightly, and the Nadder’s eyes watched him all the way. For lack of anything better, Hiccup jammed the metal end of his staff between the teeth of the snapper, pulling with all of his weight to get it to open an inch or two. The trigger plate shifted in turn, and Hiccup tapped it with his left foot until Toothless looked round and sniffed it.

“Oh, come on,” said Hiccup. “Toothless, I am not heavy enough to move that trigger plate. Going to need you on that.”

Most of the adults of the village could reset a snapper after they were done dealing with the dragon inside it, by a combination of their weight on the trigger plate and forcing the teeth apart. Hiccup was a long way off that. He tapped his foot against it more insistently, until finally Toothless seemed to get the idea and hooked his foot into the gap to pull the trigger plate down.

With a groan characteristic of metal in the Berk climate, the trap slowly opened and then clanged back down to earth around them. Toothless barked and leapt away, wings flicking outwards and plates back as he sniffed at the bloodied teeth of the trap, and even Astrid had closed her eyes as the trap slammed open not all that far from her head.

The Nadder collapsed to the ground with a whine. The smell of dead flesh hit Hiccup so hard that he felt his stomach lurch, but he forced himself to look at the wound.

Well, at least it could be said that the snapper had done its job. It had sheared flesh down to the bone, severing the wing membrane almost completely. Above the wound, the flesh was blackening, and below it blood and pus started running again.

“We need to staunch that bleeding,” said Hiccup, pulling off his cloak. He barely noticed the cold as he dropped to his knees next to the wing and pulled it up onto his shoulder. “All right,” he said to himself, “we’re elevated. Now...” he shuffled a fold of his cloak beneath the wound and then pressed it over the top.

“You sure that you want me to be the one to stay?” said Astrid, raising an eyebrow.

It was possible for someone else to fly Toothless. Hiccup suspected that he would be faster, but over this distance it should not make too much of a difference, and he had to admit that for all of his original intentions, he was not sure that he could bring himself to leave the Nadder now.

“You go,” he said finally. He looked around for Toothless, and sighed to see him snuffling around in the snow behind the Nadder. “Come on, bud. You go with Astrid, I’ll wait with this guy.”

Astrid gently removed her hands from the Nadder’s skin, and carefully walked around the Nadder towards Toothless. He pawed at the snow more insistently, then looked up and gave a short, low cry in Hiccup’s direction.

“What?” he said, shifting the Nadder’s wing slightly on his shoulder. “Bud, I can’t come and look.”

“Oh...” said Astrid, looking down. She hunkered down and cleared more snow away. “You might have to rethink the ‘guy’ part.”

Reaching into the snow, she lifted up a turquoise egg, pointed at one end and about the size of their heads. Hiccup felt the bottom drop out of his stomach, and had to put one hand from the ground to stop feeling as if he was going to fall over. “Oh, gods,” he said softly.

“The snow can’t be good for them,” said Astrid. “Should we... no, Toothless,” she said, as Toothless hunkered down over where he had been digging, curling his tail around and murring in the Nadder’s direction.

“Let’s put them against her, at least,” he said. It was clutching at straws, and he knew it, but he did not know what to do with eggs. Meatlug’s had only been away from her for a day or two, and had hatched not long after.

Toothless backed up reluctantly when Astrid shooed him away, and Hiccup helped her to position the eggs within the curl of the Nadder’s side. There were four of them, and the Nadder huffed to Astrid as the last one was slid into place against her belly.

“You’re welcome,” said Astrid. “Now come on, Toothless. Let’s go get Gobber.”

 

 

 

 

 

It began to snow again while he was waiting for them to return, lightly but with the large flakes that warned that a heavier fall was coming in.  Hiccup’s knees and shin started to ache with the snow, but he ignored them, only shifting slightly so that his left foot did not leave bruises where he sat on it.

The wound smelt bad. That was the worst part, Hiccup could not help but feel; a wound which looked bad could be made to look better, but once the smell of rot began to set in everybody knew that it was in the hands of the gods. And nobody was sure which gods watched over dragons.

“I’m sorry, girl,” he said, once the others were well gone. There were other traps as well, all over the island, in places that it was thought that wildlings were not too likely to go. There were often secondary traps around them, and carvings on the trees that were meant to protect. Usually, it worked, and the traps were left untouched. But that only made them better at catching dragons, and between everything that had happened it had apparently not occurred to anyone to take them down. “I wish we’d gotten here sooner.”

He ran his hand over her scales. They were not quite cold to the touch, but they were cooler than Hiccup’s bare skin even in this weather, and as they continued to sit there her head started to droop and she turned as if to lay it beside the eggs.

“No, girl, come on,” Hiccup urged her, reaching out to put his hand on her jaw. She picked her head up enough to look at him, cocked it slightly, and to his relief kept it off the ground. Her tail wrapped a little more tightly around her eggs. “That’s it. Stay with me.”

They did not even have Stormfly to adopt the eggs if something happened, Hiccup realised, and then hated himself for the thought. Giving up on this Nadder was not an option. He shifted her wing on his shoulder and winced at the fresh smell of dead flesh. It was probably not long, though it felt like an eternity, until he heard a Night Fury’s cry cutting through the air, and he shaded his eyes as he looked up to see Toothless dropping down out of the sky to land, this time, squarely in the clearing.

Astrid sat forward in the saddle, face set and eyes hard, while Gobber clung to the safety strap behind her with ice in his moustache and a slightly wide-eyed look. Astrid jumped into the snow, Gobber following more stiffly, and the Nadder lifted its head to look at them but only gave a faint growl.

Hiccup didn’t need to point out why they needed Gobber, and didn’t need to ask when a pained expression passed across Gobber’s face. Instead, he unfolded his cloak as Gobber came near, and wasn’t surprised when Gobber did not flinch at the sight of the injury beneath.

“Snapper did its job, all right,” said Gobber in an undertone. He sounded far from proud.

“Toothless does all right without a tail,” Hiccup replied. From the corner of his eye, he saw Astrid hunker down by the Nadder’s head and start to stroke its cheek. “We can provide food for her.”

“If the sickness hasn’t gone into the blood...” Gobber sounded dubious even as he said it. He used the tip of his hook to touch the dead skin on the end of the Nadder’s wing, not earning a response even as the flesh cracked and blackish blood oozed out. It was all that Hiccup could do not to heave. “Maybe.”

He reached for the Nadder’s side, and she growled again, this time raising her head from Astrid’s touch and turning towards Gobber for a moment. Her uninjured wing scraped the snow.

“She’s got eggs,” said Astrid, making Gobber look up in surprise. “By her side.”

“That might complicate things,” said Gobber.

“Then we feed them as well.” Hiccup put his hand on the lower part of the Nadder’s wing protectively, even as Gobber frowned. “We can save them.”

Gobber knelt down carefully and rested his right hand on the Nadder’s flank. “Cold,” he said, “and dry.” His hand traced the line of the Nadder’s hips, and Hiccup realised with a sinking feeling that the Nadder’s bones were visible as shadows beneath the skin, the planes of her hips and the lines of her ribs. Her tail twitched, and a couple of spines came loose, falling rather than fired into the snow. “Her scales are flaking.”

Even in the arena – even after years in the arena, in Stormfly’s case – none of the dragons had been allowed to become this sick. “Then we amputate the end of her wing,” said Hiccup firmly. “Clean out the wound. Feed her up, keep her warm.

“Hiccup,” said Gobber softly.

There was blood on Hiccup’s hands, but it wasn’t running any more, just drying in place. The Nadder’s breathing was becoming more laboured, and as one of her feet slid from under her Hiccup felt the weight on his shoulder increase. It still felt light. “I won’t give up on her.”

Without speaking, Gobber got to his feet and brushed the snow off his knees. Hiccup stared him down, jaw clenched, until Gobber slipped a hand beneath his shoulder and pulled the wing away with the other.

“No,” said Hiccup. He tried to squirm his shoulder out of Gobber’s hold, but the older man was too strong, and Hiccup was hauled bodily upwards and too his feet, even if his right was too cold and numb for him to be able to stand on his own. “Gobber, put me – _Thor_!” he was turned away from the Nadder and steered towards the edge of the clearing. “Gobber!” he hissed.

Finally, Gobber put him down, but kept a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back against the tree. Hiccup tried to look around him, to where Astrid and Toothless still stood beside the Nadder, but Gobber managed very effectively to block his view. “Hiccup.”

“Please, Gobber,” he found himself saying. “Don’t.”

Over the years, he could still have counted the moments of sorrow in Gobber’s eyes on one hand. He was the one who never buckled, even when Hiccup could not bear feeling so out of place, or when even Stoick needed someone with whom he could share his fears.

“I’m sorry, lad,” said Gobber. “You can’t save them all. But there is one kindness we can do her. Now, you and Astrid take those eggs back to Berk, and then one of you can come back for me afterwards.”

 

 

 

 

 

They bundled up the eggs in Astrid’s cloak, and perhaps it was the way that the mother let them do so that let Hiccup know that Gobber had been right. He still remembered how Meatlug had howled. Astrid offered to fly, but he mumbled something and waved at the eggs that she was holding, and ran his hand over the Nadder’s forehead one more time before slipping into Toothless’s saddle and turning his eyes away.

They flew in silence, the snow gradually thickening around them, and Hiccup could tell that his fingers were slowly growing numb where he gripped the edge of Toothless’s saddle. He meant to land by Astrid’s house, but Toothless turned them aside at the last minute and set down right outside the door of their own home, with a jolt that nearly send Hiccup tumbling into the snow.

“Nice landing,” said Hiccup. Toothless eyed him over one shoulder and huffed. “Astrid,” he added, turning as best he could in the saddle with the eggs still pressed against his back like a reminder, “you should probably get them into a hearth. I’ll go back and get Gobber.”

Toothless’s wing clipped him on the back of the head, and Hiccup was knocked off to land ungracefully in the snow for the second time in recent days. His foot, however, remained in the stirrup, and he was left rather stuck with one foot up in the air and at an awkward angle until Astrid reached down and unclipped it for him. Hiccup flopped onto his back.

“You know, this is really just adding to the marvellous experience that is today,” he said.

“Or it could mean,” said Astrid, more gently dismounting with the eggs still in the cloak as she extended them to Hiccup, “that he thinks you should take the eggs, and I should go back and get Gobber.”

Propping himself up onto his elbows, Hiccup looked over Toothless’s face for any sign of agreement. Toothless twitched his plates.

“Well, it’s good to know who makes the plans around here,” said Hiccup finally. He rolled to his knees and pushed to his feet, a move at which he was improving, and scooped the cloak out of Astrid’s arms. It felt warm, though whether that was just from having been between them was anyone’s guess. “You’re sure?”

She jerked her head towards Toothless. “I’ll defer to the one-tonne dragon.”

For an instant, he managed a smile, then carefully turned back to the house. It took a little bit of care to open the door and squirm through, and felt strange not to have Toothless barging it further open behind him. He froze, as if caught, at the sight of Runa standing by the fire and talking to his father while Elsa moved around in the kitchen further behind them.

“Hiccup,” said Stoick, sounding shocked. He pushed a chair out of the way and swept in to Hiccup’s left side, taking hold of his upper arm. “What happened to you?”

Oh, yeah, the blood. “It’s not mine,” said Hiccup. The cold outside had probably helped, but unless he got this shirt washed quickly there was going to be a worse smell than blood to deal with. He saw his father’s eyes travel down to the bundle of cloak, and with a sigh Hiccup reached to peel back the uppermost layer and reveal the curve of pale blue beneath. “It was a female,” he said softly.

Whether his father caught the past tense, or just the tone in Hiccup’s voice, he nodded sadly. “I see. And where are these to go?”

“The fire. I think,” said Hiccup. Stoick patted his shoulder and stepped aside, and he looked up to see Runa looking at him with a pained, rueful expression. “Thank you,” he told her, sending surprise across her face. “For telling me. We wouldn’t have found these otherwise.”

Treading carefully so as not to slip on his wet left foot, Hiccup made his way across to the fire. He set Astrid’s cloak down, and was about to reach for the woodpile when he looked up to see Elsa had beaten him to it. With a minute nod to her, Hiccup scooped up the first of the eggs instead.

It felt more substantial in his hands than its mother’s wing had done, in a way. Unlike Meatlug’s rough eggs, Nadder ones were smooth, as tough as hardened leather beneath his fingertips. When he tried to brush away one of the dark brown marks, he realised that they were part of the shell, not dirt, and instead traced one cluster with his fingertip. Just a few days.

With a shake of his thoughts, Hiccup set the first egg down into the fire, as close to the centre as he could without burning himself, and withdrew his hands hastily as Elsa started to place more wood around it. The second egg followed, and then the third and fourth, and for a moment with the last one he thought that he saw a shadow inside, backlit by the fire. Then he blinked, and the effect was gone.

He picked up Astrid’s cloak, folded it over on itself, and offered it to Runa. “Here. Astrid let me borrow this.”

Nodding, Runa took the cloak, folding it a second time and holding it to the centre of her chest distractedly. Her eyes remained on the eggs for a while longer, then she tore them away and turned straight back to Stoick. “I should be going. There’s always work to be done.”

“Of course, Runa,” Stoick replied. He held open the door for her as she left hastily, then looked over at the eggs and gave a heavy sigh. “You know what you’re planning to do with those?”

“Fishlegs has notes about the Gronckle hatchlings,” said Hiccup. “And I’ve got Toothless. If need be, I’m sure we can manage.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say more, but seeing the frown already starting on his father’s lips he refrained. “Don’t worry about me. As Runa said, there’s always work to be done.”

No sooner had he spoken then there was a knocking at the door. Stoick sighed, then drew himself up and turned to answer it. Phlegma was on the doorstep, expression grim, and Stoick immediately stepped outside and closed the door behind himself to speak to her.

“Hiccup?” said Elsa gently.

Even if he could not tell his father, he had to tell somebody. Turning, Hiccup went to take Elsa’s hands, then remembered that his own were none too clean and refrained. “I’m going to try to find the other dragons,” he said in an undertone. “Tonight. Snoggletog is the day after tomorrow, and...”

He could not quite wrap words around it, other than perhaps that he wanted to have something that was not a complete failure by the time that Snoggletog came around. But Elsa nodded. “Your father cannot know,” she surmised.

It was cold enough in the day, without even trying to fly at night, but right now there were more things than the cold to worry about. “Pretty much. If anything happens with the eggs before I get back, I need you to go to Fishlegs.”

Elsa touched his forearm lightly, looking sympathetic, and the gesture meant more from her than it would have done from anyone else. As Stoick entered the house again, removing his helmet, the wind made the fire flicker and Hiccup’s heart leapt into his throat. His leather gloves from the forge would help, would let the eggs be turned and shifted within the fire, or Gobber would be able to move them.

“Just an issue with the stores,” said Stoick. He waved away Hiccup’s words before they were even spoken. “It’ll be handled. We can press some of the empty buildings into use.” His voice softened. “You should change.”

Hiccup looked down at his shirt, then turned his face away again as he got a good smell of the state of it. “Yeah,” he said. “That would probably be a good idea.” Perhaps it would help, to get everything off him, the blood out from under his nails and off his skin. “Might need some salt for this one.”

Contrary to what Gobber seemed to believe, it was not that Hiccup was bad at washing clothes. It was simply that he had a habit of getting distracted, which could either leave things being forgotten or end with him thinking of something else scrubbing the same item against the washboard, damaging it in the process. He was getting better with time, though.

It was indeed a relief to wash his side, scrub at his nails, and slip on clean, dry clothes instead. He still could not yet carry a bowl of water downstairs, but he could put his filthy shirt in a bucket of cold water once he got down there, at least. He was looking forward to whenever he got both hands back to himself again. He fussed with the fire again, although he knew that there was not really anything more that he could do for the eggs now, until he heard Toothless’s call outside and hurried to the front door to welcome the others home.

Toothless was the first to meet him, bouncing up and putting his front paws on Hiccup’s shoulders, sending him staggering back. A laugh burst from his lips, even as he steered Toothless downwards again, getting licked once on the face but avoiding too enthusiastic of a bathing. The laughter faded as Gobber appeared in the doorway, not saying anything but just nodding, gently, as Stoick caught his eye. Hiccup’s determination hardened in his chest as he ran his hand over Toothless’s forehead and down onto his cheek. They needed the other dragons back. And for that, he needed to find where they had gone in the first place.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're past the worst point, and now we're on the up, I promise. The only warning on this chapter is for cuteness!

Climbing out of the window wasn’t really an option when he needed to get Toothless out of the house as well. Instead, Hiccup waited until there were two sets of snores making their way up from downstairs before getting up from his workbench where he had been putting the finishing touches to the Mystery Class entry on the Night Fury. He pulled on another couple of layers of clothing and hushed Toothless as best he could before creeping downstairs in the low light of the banked fire. For a moment, he paused, looking at the eggs still nestled there, then took a deep breath and stepped out into the steady snow.

Tracking the dragons had proved hard enough during the day, and when he should have been able to catch them by speed alone. After days, and at night, it would only be harder. If Hiccup had not had an idea.

There were two dragons left on the island. And if Toothless would not take him wherever the rest of the dragons had gone, Hiccup could only hope that the Terrible Terror would.

He did not, however, want to wake Astrid’s parents. Usually, the upstairs room went to the adults of the house, and the rooms on the ground floor would be given to the children; Hiccup was an anomaly, and he knew that it was because Stoick wanted him in a room that was harder to get out of and cause trouble from. Astrid would be downstairs, and the rear bedrooms of the houses usually had a second door.

Hiccup kept them to the shadows as much as he could, behind houses and in areas that were no longer so deep in snow. It was harder to sneak around with a black dragon in winter. Absurd as it was, there was something about this that was just between him and Toothless, and he did not want his father to find out unless it was when Hiccup was bringing news of where the other dragons had gone.

He rapped on Astrid’s door, as loud as he dared given that he could only imagine her parents being light sleepers, paused for a few seconds, and rapped again. It sounded painfully loud to his ears, but he had a strong suspicion that it was barely audible inside.

“This isn’t working,” he muttered to Toothless. He ran one hand over his chin, considering, then drew his Gronckle iron knife and hunkered down in front of the door. The blade was thinner than most viking knives, and he was able to slip it between the door and its frame, shuffling it upwards until he felt it catch on the latch inside. Carefully Hiccup opened the latch, and pushed the door open a few inches before pausing and reconsidering.

Considering the fact that he was determined that his father would never find out about any of his antics tonight, breaking into Astrid’s bedroom should not have been a problem on that front. But Hiccup could still not bring himself to do it, especially not in the middle of the night. He frowned, considering his options, and looked over at Toothless.

Well, that was one way around it. “Go on, Toothless,” said Hiccup, pointing through the door. “Go wake up Astrid.” Toothless cocked his head, perking up his flaps. “Astrid,” said Hiccup, more firmly.

He had to step out of the way to let Toothless squirm through the door and into the darkened house. Hiccup hastily pulled the door almost-closed again, hoping to keep in at least most of the heat, and held his breath waiting to hear some indication that Astrid was he wake.

What he heard was vaguely... slobbery. Hiccup cringed, thinking of his own regular wake-up calls and leant up to the doorframe. “No, Toothless!” he hissed. “No licking! Don’t lick people! Toothless!”

“What the–” Astrid spluttered, then Hiccup heard the movement of blankets, quickly followed by footsteps.

He put his head in his hands. “Thank you, Loki.” He looked up just in time for the door to be yanked open and for Astrid to appear, scowling. She had one hand on the back of Toothless’s neck in what was probably an attempt to scruff him, and her hair stuck to one side of her face. Toothless’s tongue was lolling out as he looked up at Hiccup.

“I’m going to presume this was your idea,” said Astrid, pointing at Toothless.

Hiccup sighed. “Are you proud of yourself?” It was a few seconds before he realised that he was staring at Toothless as if expecting an answer, and looked calmly back to Astrid. “I did ask him to get you, but I did not specify how. That part he took into his own hands.”

With a sigh, Astrid pushed some of her hair back, then grimaced at the Night Fury saliva on her hand. “And you told him to get me because?”

“I need to borrow the Terrible Terror. Does it have a name?”

“You need to _what_?”

“The Terror. It’s the only dragon left on the island other than Toothless, and I’m hoping that it’s going to lead me to the other dragons even if he can’t.”

Or _won’t_ ; Hiccup supposed that _won’t_ was also a possibility, but did not want to linger too long on that thought. Astrid peered at him suspiciously, then stepped back, pulling Toothless back with her. “Come inside,” she said. “It’s cold enough in here as it is.”

Hiccup stepped through the door, then aside as Astrid pushed it closed behind him. The room fell dark, and he reached for the wall and stood still until the door to the front room was opened and the low light of the fire came through, just enough to pick out lines and edges in the room. He realised that Astrid had been sleeping in her clothes, something which had been so common before the peace with the dragons that even Hiccup had done a lot of the time. Switching to a nightshirt afterwards had been almost an act of defiance.

Wrapping her arms around her, Astrid turned back to face Hiccup. “What are you even talking about? The Terror is going to help you find the other dragons?”

He kept his voice low. “The dragons called to each other before they left. I’m pretty sure that means that they went together. I couldn’t find them at first, and they weren’t heading to Dragon Island, but if they’re all together then perhaps the Terror can help me find them.” When Astrid still looked less than convinced, he sighed. “Look, I really can’t think of any alternatives right now. We have orphaned dragon eggs sitting in my fireplace, Toothless, a Terror that can’t fly, and no clue where the rest of the dragons are.”

“I’ll get the Terror,” said Astrid, shaking her head.

She slipped through into the living room, and for lack of an invitation Hiccup hung back and simply did his best to peer through the door after her. If he shuffled sideways a few steps, he could see her duck down to the eaves and peer along them, making a clicking noise with her tongue. After a few seconds, the Terror stuck its head out, and Astrid scooped it into her arms. It made a squeaky, irritated noise, which she ignored as she bought it straight back and deposited it into Hiccup’s arms.

“Here,” she said. “I really hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Of course I do. I’m the Dragon Conqueror.”

“The Dragon what?” To Astrid’s credit, she delivered it with a level of incredulity which even Hiccup would not previously have thought possible. He felt the colour rush to his cheeks, fit to melt the snow outside.

“The, uh,” a nervous laugh crept out, and Hiccup all but clutched the Terror to his chest. “It’s a name that the Outcasts apparently came up with.”

Astrid slowly shook her head. “Every time I think I’ve heard the strangest thing from you, you go that extra league.”

“I work hard at it. Now, if you will excuse me,” he continued quickly, backing towards the door and bumping into Toothless in the process. “The sooner I get flying, the better chance I have of getting back before my father decides to check my room for some unfathomable reason, like a sneaking suspicion that I’ve flown off in search of the other dragons.”

He finally managed to find the door-handle, and fled before Astrid could look any dubious than she already did about Hiccup’s admittedly none-too-detailed plan. Pulling the door closed behind them, Hiccup turned to Toothless and took a deep breath.

“Ready to go, bud?”

Toothless huffed, breath misted on the air, and cocked his head to the side. As Hiccup approached, he hunkered down to let him climb into place more easily, although he did squirm slightly when the Terror was set down between his shoulderblades and hunkered down so that it was almost hidden behind his flaps.

“All right, then,” said Hiccup, his eyes on the Terror. “Let’s go find those others.”

 

 

 

 

 

Above the clouds, it was so cold that Hiccup’s breath froze on his eyelashes, but at least he could see the stars strung out above them. They followed the twitching of the Terror’s nose and the way that its head swung from side to side, and Hiccup kept half an eye on the stars to see that they swung far further west than they would have done just to go to Dragon Island.

It took far longer than Hiccup had expected. Even if they were holding back, and he was watching the Terror, he did not anticipate how long they would be flying for, and they were deep into the night before the Terror’s wasted wings began to flap, and its body wound tight with anticipation.

“Come on, Toothless,” said Hiccup from behind his scarf. One of these days he was going to have to get a helmet. “Let’s head down a way.”

They broke down through the clouds again, thinner here, and the Terror cried out and jumped in place with such excitement that it almost fell from Toothless’s back. Hiccup grabbed it round the middle and pulled it back onto the folded blanket he had put over the front of the saddle, and it gave an irritated squawk before apparently realising who he was and licking his hand instead.

“I’m guessing that means we’re close,” he said, mostly to the Terror. A flash of fire below caught his eye, and he guided Toothless further down, slowing up as another fire – this one white-hot Nadder flame – cut through the night. Even if it wasn’t Stormfly, it was dragons, and just that thought made him giddy with relief.

The faint outline of an island came into view below them, different shades of darkness by the light of the waning crescent moon. To their right, Hiccup could see the reflection of fire on water, and banking around the promontory of the cliffs he drew up short in astonishment as he saw what lay before him.

Hundreds of dragons lined the rambling cove before him. It had to be the most that he had seen since the Red Death, but here they were curled beside half-molten rock, singly or in pairs or – and a smile spread across Hiccup’s face as he realised – with clusters of eggs or hatchlings at their feet. He patted Toothless’s side and led them in to land on the very edge of the beach, giving a wide berth to any of the other dragons, and stopped just to look in awe around him.

Not five metres away, a green Nightmare, with darker edges to its wings and spines and gentle fire licking over its skin here and there, was greeting a handful of baby Nightmares as they crawled out of the water and shook themselves, spraying water everywhere. Further down the beach, Hiccup could make out silhouettes of other dragons doing the same, or nosing eggs down into the water, and from the movement further from the shoreline he suspected that the same was going on in rock pools further inshore. One of the Nightmare hatchlings looked blue by the light of the adult’s flames, two green, and as Hiccup watched a fourth one, darkly reddish, tripped over its wings on the way out of the surf and tumbled head-over-heels with a squeak. The adult Nightmare carefully picked the hatchling up in its mouth and deposited it a little further away from the gentle waves.

“This is the nest,” said Hiccup softly. He watched a Gronckle nosing a good half-dozen eggs into the water all at once, as the Nightmare led its brood away. A laugh escaped him as he reached up and unwound his scarf. “Dragon Island wasn’t where you guys nested at all. It was just where the Red Death made you stay.”

The Terror jumped off Toothless’s back; Hiccup grabbed for it, but missed, and could only watch as it scurried away into the darkness of the beach.

“Oh, Thor.”

He glanced at Toothless, whose head was hunched low and whose plates were back, but who looked more wary than prepared for a fight.

“It’s all right, bud. I’ll find him.”

There were dragon hatchlings everywhere. Hiccup slipped out of the saddle and stood up, then had to duck as a Nadder swooped so low over his head that he was almost hit by its claws. He really wasn’t sure how easy it was going to be to find one Terrible Terror among what looked to be dozens, if not hundreds, of dragons, but it seemed that he was at least going to have to try.

One of the Nightmares, still wet from the water, gave a soft cry as it turned and caught sight of him. Immediately, the adult’s head whipped round, eyes fixing on Hiccup, and its mouth opened slightly to reveal a warning that was all teeth. Hiccup stepped back hastily, then turned and raised his hand, angling his head away.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said to the Nightmare, in that same calm voice. “I’m just looking for my friend.”

He felt the heat of the Nightmare as it leant in close, and heard it sniff him thoroughly. The sniffing came so close that he felt it on his hand and cheek, and Hiccup closed his eyes for a moment, then he felt a nudge against his hand and heaved a sigh.

“There we go.” He looked up cautiously to see the Nightmare giving him a look that seemed approving. Though that may have been partially his imagination. A chirp sounded from around knee-height, and Hiccup looked down to see one of the green hatchlings at his feet, sniffing curiously at his prosthetic.

Laughing, Hiccup hunkered down and reached out a cupped hand towards the hatchling. It sniffed it, looking like Toothless when he expected fish, and Hiccup shook his head fondly as it immediately offered up its chin to let him scratch.

The red hatchling scurried over as well, headbutting Hiccup’s right leg in the process, and looked up at him with huge, adoring eyes. There was a faint rumble from the adult overhead, but it was not quite strong enough to even be called a warning, let alone a threat.

Hiccup reached to scratch the second hatchling on its side. “It’s all right,” he said, with a glance to the adult. “I’m not going to hurt them.”

There was a disconcerted murr from behind them, and Hiccup looked round to see Toothless landing from a bound, spinning to face the blue hatchling that must have snuck up behind him. It looked up at him and chirped, and hurried in to sniff at him again even as he backed away, sitting up and looking confused. The adult looked him over as well, and huffed.

“Looks like you’re a rarity around here as well, bud,” said Hiccup, managing not to laugh but still grinning broadly. The hatchling closed in to sniff at one of Toothless’s front paws, until Toothless picked it up with an almost offended expression.

He straightened up, with some regret. “Come on. We need to find that Terror.”

He could not be sure whether the other dragons were here as well. Stormfly had been in the arena for so long that she could surely not be breeding, and Barf and Belch had been in there for over a year as well. However little Vikings knew about dragon breeding, he could be pretty sure that Hookfang would not be laying eggs any time soon. And Meatlug already had her hatchlings. There were so many dragons here that it had to be some sort of migration, but he did not even know whether this was the only island where their breeding took place. Perhaps it was simply that it was further from humans.

Or, he realised as he wove on between the adults and their clusters of young, perhaps it was the heat. Even in the middle of winter, heat seemed to surround the island, and as he reached the edge of the beach and found himself on sturdier rock the telltale smell of sulphur caught his attention. That probably meant that there were hot springs not all that far away. Though the air was still none too warm, it had nowhere near the bite that it did on Berk, and he could walk comfortably enough without fear of starting to shiver.

Adult dragons turned to look at him with curiosity more than fear, and though a few bared their teeth there was no fire breathed in his direction, no snaps or slashing claws. The closest was one of the Nadders, who wrapped a wing in front of its young to stop them heading in Hiccup’s direction. But the hatchlings were bold, and it seemed that every few steps one or two would be at Hiccup’s feet, trying to sniff him or Toothless or bouncing in place with their heads stretched up as if hoping that he had food for them.

They were fearless. It filled Hiccup with a strange sense of awe, that the hatchlings hurried over to investigate both a human and a Night Fury without any sign of trepidation. He stepped carefully over them, looked apologetically in the direction of whichever adult of the appropriate species seemed closest, and once or twice righted Gronckles that got a little too enthusiastic in their interest and tumbled over onto their sides. They looked smaller than Skyfire and Silversnap, to Hiccup’s eyes, but bigger than the two of them had been on hatching.

He climbed over a low, rocky ridge, sliding down the other side, and stumbled into a Gronckle standing at the base. It turned and growled, fire glowing in its throat, and Hiccup felt a surge of fear as he saw the deep, knotted scar that twisted down one side of its face and blinded its right eye.

“Easy, buddy,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

With a deepening growl, the Gronckle opened its mouth and drew up to fire. Toothless snarled and flared his wings. Hiccup went to fling himself sideways, only to hit a wall of solid _dragon_ and be knocked to the ground, another Gronckle standing over him with one paw resting lightly – for a Gronckle – on his chest. He could just about breathe.

The newcomer huffed at the scarred Gronckle, which shook its head and then hurried backwards, looking reproachfully at them both. With a groan, Hiccup leant his head against the ground. This trip was not going to plan. He was just about to thank the Gronckle who had apparently decided to rescue him when it turned and immediately started licking his face.

Realisation dawned. “Meatlug?” Hiccup managed to get his hands in the way and get enough distance that he could see her familiar tan face, and laughed. “Meatlug! Oh girl, am I happy to see you!”

She got in one more lick before he managed to wriggle out, still laughing and wiping his face with his sleeve. Grabbing his cane, Hiccup stood up again, running his hand over Meatlug’s cheek, and turned back to Toothless.

“See?”

Toothless cocked his head, although even Hiccup had to admit that was probably more to do with Hiccup’s bursts of laughter. All the same, he came over when Hiccup extended a hand, and rubbed his cheek all along Hiccup’s arm.

There was a tug on Hiccup’s vest, and he staggered in the direction that Meatlug was dragging him with a bemused expression. Not that there was much of a choice when it came to doing what a Gronckle wanted. After a few metres, she apparently decided that Hiccup would have the idea and released him, and he followed her with just a glance over his shoulder to make sure that Toothless was in tow as well.

Out here, there were fewer dragons, and Hiccup could see discrete clusters as he looked around. The hatchlings clustered together, handfuls of Nadders or Nightmares, or larger groups of Gronckles, and one or two adults of the same species were with them at all times while others seemed to come and go, regurgitating catches of fish onto which the hatchlings immediately pounced. It reminded him of how people on Berk worked together to raise children, especially in harder years or when the boats had been still seeking Dragon Island.

The thought made Hiccup smile as he followed Meatlug into a cave, looking at first little more than a hollow in the rock. It was getting easier to see in the darkness now, and when he heard the rustling of a Nadder’s wings and the huff of a Nightmare, he knew immediately who it was.

“There you are!” He hurried forwards just in time to be headbutted by Hookfang and knocked back a step again, getting smeared with Nightmare saliva has he did so. Stormfly grunted her hello, bowing her head rather than moving from her spot even as Skyfire and Silversnap peered out from below her wings. The Terrible Terror seemed to have beaten him there, and was also curled up next to Stormfly. “Oh, you guys had me so worried. Where are Barf and Belch?”

The cave was bigger than he had first thought, he realised. It had to be, for Hookfang to have curled around it with room left for Stormfly and Meatlug both. Though Barf and Belch were definitely not going to be fitting in as well.

Stormfly gave a shriek that made his teeth rattle, in such a confined space, and Hiccup looked round to see the silhouette of a Zippleback against the still-dark sky. Knowing what to expect by now, Hiccup grinned and stepped aside as Barf and Belch landed outside. One head snaked in and regurgitated a dozen fish onto the ground. With gleeful squeaks, Silversnap and Skyfire wormed out from beneath Stormfly’s protective hunker and scurried over to tuck in.

“So this is where you guys come, huh? This is...” he searched for a word, then found it with a chuckle. “Your nursery! You come here to have your babies, right?”

The dragons regarded him as if he was talking nonsense, which to them he probably was, and as the hatchlings downed the last of the fish, Skyfire spotted Toothless and gave a chuff of welcome before running over and headbutting his front leg. A resigned look settled over Toothless’s face, but he reached down and gave a nudge with his nose in return.

Barf and Belch exchanged a glance, then one of them – Barf, Hiccup corrected himself, sorting out his left and right – leant over and hawked up a fish right at Hiccup’s feet.

“I’m good, thanks,” he said, even as his stomach chose the moment to growl loudly. It looked like Barf was grinning at him, but it was wholly possible that it was just the dragon’s normal expression. It was rather reminiscent of the twins.

Hiccup looked down at the fish and sighed. It was still intact, and he did have his knife to skin and gut it, he supposed. Plus, having dragons around at least meant a source of fire, even if Toothless did tend to look offended every time he was asked to cook what he probably saw as a perfectly good raw fish.

“Fine,” he said to the grinning Zippleback. “But I’m not making this a regular thing, you know.”

 

 

 

 

 

He sat in the doorway of the cave, eating the somewhat charred flesh of the fish and feeding the skin and guts to the hatchlings that scurried round from the next cave along. They were Nadders, all huge head and even huger eyes, and they barged each other out of the way to get to sniff Hiccup. An adult, deep purple with darker markings on its wings, watched Hiccup suspiciously but did not intervene as he scratched the hatchlings under their chins and in the centre of their backs. It was not long before one of them climbed into his lap and curled up there, murmuring away contentedly to itself as it did so.

With a full stomach and a hatchling on his lap, he might have dozed off a while; Hiccup started suddenly, looking around to see the world still dark but with a sense that the stars had moved overhead. If he wanted to be back before sunrise, he would probably have to start flying again soon.

“Sorry, little guy,” said Hiccup, scooping up the Nadder hatchling into his arms. It chirped in protest. “I need to be getting back to my family.”

At least he could tell them that the dragons were safe. Better than safe, in fact, with their community and their young and a safe hatching ground with no Red Death in sight. Perhaps everything that they had done had been to keep the Red Death away from here.

 “Come on, Toothless.” From just inside the cave, Toothless perked up his head and looked around. “We still need to find that damn Terror.”

Distracted by the hatchlings, it had seemed less important to find the Terror that had led them here, but now he felt a pang of guilt. It had allowed him to find them, after all. Grimacing, Hiccup was trying to work out how to even search for it when he heard the scrabble of claws on rock, and peered into the depths of the cave to see the Terror itself, still with a fish’s tail hanging out of its mouth, pattering across the cave floor towards him.

“Really,” said Hiccup. “You were that desperate to get back to them, huh?” All the same, he found himself smiling, and the shake of his head was fond. “You guys really did form some bonds in that arena. Come on, little guy.”

Carefully, he scooped up the Nadder from his lap and put it down beside him, although stretching his stiff legs made him regret that he had sat down at all. His first attempt to get back to his feet was foiled by the usual culprit of his left foot, and he ended up propping himself up on the rock in a rather undignified manner until his legs decided to play along and assist him. Well, at least there had only been dragons around to see that.

Toothless’s saddle and tail were still in place, but Hiccup checked them over out of habit before scooping up the Terror and settling it on the front of the saddle again. He mounted up as well and turned to the others. “You guys stay here if you want,” he said to Meatlug, Stormfly and Barf and Belch. Perhaps it was Hookfang’s turn to get fish for them. “Take all the time that you need.”

With the slightest touch, he led Toothless outside, wings stretching and testing the air on either side of them. Hiccup looked around them again, eyes even more accustomed to the darkness now, and smiled to see the clusters of adults and hatchlings in little sheltered nooks around them. Hopefully this generation of dragons would learn that humans did not have to be fought, in the way that humans were going to learn the same about dragons.

He was just ready to leave when Hookfang swooped in again, flickers of fire on his skin making the outline of his horns unmistakeable, but to Hiccup’s surprise he swerved to their left and settled down just behind another outcropping of rock. Curiosity piqued, Hiccup dismounted again and walked round, then leant against the rock and watched as Hookfang spat up his delivery of fish for a small group of Monstrous Nightmare hatchlings. They hurried in to eat, and Hookfang padded over to the adult who had been waiting with them, touching their foreheads together with a clack of horns.

“So,” said Hiccup, “are they yours, then?”

Hookfang looked round at his voice and grunted, which only made Hiccup grin wider. He wasn’t sure how dragons felt about paternity, but considering Barf and Belch had been feeding Meatlug’s hatchlings he wasn’t sure that it was the most important thing in the world to them. But the adult Nightmare, somewhat smaller than Hookfang and with its right horn broken near the base, went back to rubbing its neck against Hookfang’s and chuffing softly.

Hiccup shrugged. “Congratulations on fatherhood, then.” With a shake of his head, he turned back to Toothless, climbed into the saddle and prepared them again. “All right. You stay with them, I’ll worry about Berk. I’ll see you after Snoggletog.”

Which he was going to miss at this rate, if he did not get going. Making sure his scarf was not going anywhere, Hiccup opened up Toothless’s tail, and with a spring off a nearby rock they took to the air. A shriek sounded from below them, and as Hiccup held back for a moment he looked down to see Stormfly emerge from the cave and join them.

“You don’t have to come, you know,” said Hiccup, then remembered that the dragons could not actually understand what he was saying, no matter how much of a habit of talking to them he had developed. For a moment he closed his eyes and thanked Thor that there had been nobody from the village around to see that, but then wondered exactly how long it was going to take for someone to catch him doing it anyway.

He patted Toothless on the shoulder, and was about to draw them away when Barf and Belch loomed up out of the darkness, quickly followed by Meatlug. When Hiccup looked closely he could see that she had Skyfire and Silversnap held in her mouth once again.

“All right, sure,” he said, purposefully to himself this time.  Snotlout would be unimpressed that his dragon was the only one not returning, but telling him about the hatchlings would hopefully mitigate that. One last time, Hiccup tried to turn Toothless around to face west-south-west again, only to hear another roar from below him and stop with a sigh.

This time, he knew what was coming. Hookfang rose up into the air beside them, with no flame this time, despite a drawn-out roar from the other Nightmare below and squeaks from the hatchlings that could be heard even at this altitude.

Hiccup groaned. “Not you! Stay with them!” He pointed towards the ground forcefully, but Hookfang just grunted and stayed in the air. From beneath, the other Nightmare was readying to fly as well, getting to its feet and stretching its wings. “No! You can’t leave the hatchlings here, for the love of...”

He wasn’t even sure which god could help him at this point. Hurriedly, Hiccup guided Toothless back down to ground level again, and made hushing noises as he approached the smaller Nightmare. She – he would guess at she, although his guesses had not been at their best as of late – looked at him quizzically, then roared loudly enough for his ears to hurt.

“Yes, thank you,” said Hiccup. He gestured downwards with his hands. “You stay here. I’ll... get Hookfang to do the same. The dragon grunted again and stretched out her wings. “Oh, come on.”

He looked over at the hatchlings. They looked a little steadier on their feet than the ones that he had seen newly-hatched and climbing out of the surf, but that still didn’t mean that they were all that old. Silversnap and Skyfire had taken weeks to fly even short distances, and Meatlug apparently thought that they could not make the long flight back to Berk unaided. Though they must have hatched early, Hiccup doubted it could make that much of a difference.

Careful to keep eye contact, he reached out his hand to the female Nightmare. She paused for a moment, considering him, then reached in and touched her snout very lightly to his palm. Hiccup released his breath again, then cupped her jaw with one hand before she could quite manage to pull away. “Your babies need you,” he said gently.

He was rewarded for his efforts by another roar, this one close enough to send him staggering back and wincing at the pain that stabbed into his ears. Rubbing his left ear, Hiccup frowned at the Nightmare as she flapped her wings and took off, staying close to the ground but definitely wanting to go.

“Thank you. Good to see that my efforts are appreciated.”

One of the hatchlings started to rub against his leg, which was about the last thing that he needed when he was trying to figure out what to do with them already. Hiccup made the mistake of looking down, to find a pair of huge yellow eyes looking up at him hopefully.

So, it seemed that the only way out of this was going to be to take the hatchlings with them as well. There were probably too many for the mother to carry in her mouth, with five of them tumbling over each other, and Hiccup was not sure that they would have the grip to stay on the back of any of the larger dragons. They could not all very well sit on his lap.

“Could we put you in a net?” he asked aloud. It might have been a better idea if there had been a net with him. His cloak was nowhere near big enough, and his scarf was even worse. Pressing his lips together firmly, Hiccup scanned the area around them, but it was all bare rock, not even a tree in sight. Finally, his eyes fell on Toothless once again, and a slow smile spread over his face. “Bud! Come on over here!”

With only a momentarily wary glance at the hatchlings, Toothless padded over, and turned sideways-on when Hiccup gestured for him to do so. Hiccup loosened up the blanket that he had put in place for the Terror to more comfortably cling on to. It was a bit moth-eaten in one of the corners, and smelt of sweat and dragon and leather by now, but it would certainly do. He laid it on the ground, and the hatchlings scurried on without even being prompted, sniffing around and testing their small teeth on the fabric. Mercifully, it held.

“Now we’re talking,” said Hiccup. He looked up to the female Nightmare, who was still watching him closely, then collected up the corners of the blanket so that they could all be held together. The hatchlings squeaked a little as they shifted on top of one another, but when he looked in they had settled into what looked to be a fairly contented pile. One was even grooming itself.

He very deliberately offered up the bundled corners of the blanket to the female Nightmare. With a huff, she lowered herself down, wings beating such that Hiccup had to half-close his eyes against the wind, but he watched as she carefully took hold of the bundle, claws pressing into the fabric without breaking it. When each claw had to be a foot long, Hiccup was impressed.

“There we go,” he said. “Now, we need to get going if we’re going to get back today.” Loath as he was to have to admit it, having Meatlug with them was going to slow them down considerably. Even in the long winter nights, he was no longer so sure that they were going to be back before sunrise. “Now let’s get moving. Time to introduce you little guys to Berk.”


	22. Chapter 22

When he saw the eastern horizon beginning to lighten, Hiccup knew that he was going to be in trouble when he got back. If it had been the summer, he would simply have pressed himself to Toothless’s back and sped home, and might just have made it before the sun rose right down at sea level. He did not want to have the dragons straggle out, however, and knew that people would already be up and wondering where he was.

“This,” he said to Toothless, “is going to be fun.”

The lookouts on the high defences would spot him first, he had no doubt of that. Even now, at peace with the dragons and out of the sailing season that would allow any other attacks, somebody would be up there with nets or a spindle to occupy their hands, and their eyes trained on the sea and sky. All that Hiccup could do was be grateful that, this time, he was almost certainly not going to get himself shot down.

He turned them towards the village green, not just because all of them were there but because they had the female Nightmare in tow as well. Anywhere else was probably going to result in a crowd, and he wasn’t sure if she was going to be better or worse than Hookfang when it came to those. He was not in the least bit surprised when he got close enough to see figures on the edge of the green waiting for him, though he would admit to being a little surprised to see his father among them.

With a sigh, Hiccup took them into a slow descent. “ _Lots_ of fun.”

He landed almost at his father’s feet, already attempting to put together an explanation, or at least an excuse, for vanishing off, when he was dragged into a rib-crushing embrace. Stoick was muttering something that seemed to be thanking Odin, but it was a bit hard for Hiccup to hear when he couldn’t breathe properly, and only when he was released did he gulp in air.

“You’re back,” said Stoick, still keeping hold of Hiccup’s shoulders as if he was going to run off again at any moment. “Your bed was stone cold! We figured you’d been gone all night! Where...”

He trailed off, looking over Hiccup’s head, and Hiccup felt the rush of air as the other dragons started to come in to land as well. With a shriek, Stormfly ran over to Astrid, and Astrid in turn barely had enough time to throw her arms up and catch Stormfly around the neck. There were others beginning to appear as well, following either Stoick or the general hubbub, and Fishlegs burst out from among them when a huge, relieved laugh, throwing himself against Meatlug hard enough to make her rock in place as she landed.

“I found them,” said Hiccup to his father, hoping that it might assuage the bewilderment in Stoick’s expression. It did not particularly do so. “Dad, the dragons might _live_ on Dragon Island, but they don’t hatch there. There’s a whole... nursery island, further away.”

“A nursery island?” Stoick finally dragged his eyes back down, frowning now. “They nest there?”

He nodded. “Hundreds of them, Dad. That’s all that they left for.”

“Wild Nightmare!” someone shouted, and Hiccup felt the shift in the mood as clearly as he heard the shifting of blades in their sheathes.

Breaking away from his father, he hurried into the centre of the green, where the female Nightmare was hanging back from landing, blanket still clutched in her claws. He spun to put his back to her, raising both of his hands to the gathered crowd. It was still larger than he had expected, probably fast approaching a hundred people trying to see around the other dragons who had returned to their riders. Hookfang had knocked Snotlout to the ground and was nuzzling him enthusiastically, while Snotlout tried to bat him away and made weak protests about their respective masculinities, while Barf and Belch had picked the twins up and were dangling them in the air.

“It’s all right!” said Hiccup quickly. “She came back with us. It’s all right, girl,” he said, turning to the dragon herself and gently waving her down. “Let’s get you on the ground.”

The wind from her wings buffeted against him as she carefully lowered herself down far enough to bring the blanket almost to the ground. Hiccup stepped in to guide it the last few feet, then took hold of the corners, hand brushing against her claws as she let go and backed up to land with her nose alongside him. There was something about dragon nostrils feet away from your face that never did manage to get less intimidating, but Hiccup stretched out his hand to her. She sniffed it, then huffed and nudged the blanket with her nose instead.

He chuckled. “All right, I hear you. Let’s let them out.”

He released the edges of the blanket to let the hatchlings out. The female Nightmare chuffed and laid her head down beside them as they scurried over to rub against her. Glancing over his shoulder, Hiccup could see people nudging each other and pointing to the hatchlings. Even Astrid had acknowledged that Skyfire and Silversnap were cute, and people had accepted them far faster than the adults. Now, the five variously coloured Nightmare hatchlings finished climbing over each other in their eagerness to greet their mother and started turning to look at the crowd with huge eyes.

“Somebody want a ride?” said Hiccup. He crouched down beside the hatchlings, arms outstretched, and was not in the least bit surprised when one of them hopped into his arms and dug its claws into his tunic to hold on. “There we go.”

He straightened up, a little unsteadily with the extra pounds of dragon clinging to him, and carefully made his way over to where Snotlout had managed to get back to his feet, slightly smeared with dragon saliva along the way. Snotlout was wide-eyed, and Hiccup had to wait until he finally got the idea to stretch out his arms so that the hatchling could be deposited in them.

“Is that...” Snotlout glanced over at Hookfang.

“Not a clue,” said Hiccup briskly, “but he was feeding them, and she wanted to come along. So I guess that makes you an uncle.”

He couldn’t come up with a better word, and to judge by the look of confusion – and no small amount of fear – that was on Snotlout’s face, it was probably a good thing that he had not suggested parenthood instead. With a variety of small sounds, the other hatchlings were making their way across the snow to get a good look at Snotlout and to sniff around his ankles. The female crunched over after them, and Snotlout froze as she leant in, looked him over seriously, and then began to sniff at his chest and shoulders.

Hiccup stepped out of the way to allow her better access. She sniffed all of the way down Snotlout’s front, took a few more steps forwards, and then sniffed up his back again. Only Hiccup, from where he was standing, could see that Snotlout’s eyes were screwed shut. Reaching Snotlout’s head, the Nightmare gave a very faint growl, and Hiccup stepped forwards hastily just as the female Nightmare opened her mouth, took a careful hold of Snotlout’s helmet, and flung it in the vague direction of the village. Snotlout’s eyes snapped open and his face reddened with the effort of holding his breath.

Finally, the female Nightmare licked Snotlout right across the face. Hiccup just about didn’t laugh. “I think she likes you,” he said instead.

Snotlout didn’t move an inch, but narrowed his eyes slightly at Hiccup. “Good to know.”

It took Stoick to disperse the crowd, with some help from Astrid and possibly her axe along the way, until finally only the other dragon riders remained. Finally, Stoick heaved a sigh, ran a hand over his face, and turned to face Hiccup. “Should I ask why you bought another dragon back to Berk?”

“I promise this one wasn’t intentional,” he replied. His father did not look all that convinced. “If I meant to bring more dragons back, don’t you think that I’ve have brought more than one?”

Stoick’s expression shifted to unimpressed, but right now Hiccup would take that as an improvement. He put one hand on Toothless’s back to steady himself, glancing over to see that Astrid was now crouched down examining one of the hatchlings as well.

“Hookfang was feeding them. I’m guessing that the mother didn’t want to miss out on that.”

With a sigh, Stoick curled his hands into fists and put them on his hips. “And where did you intend to have them stay?”

It had been a very long flight back. “Well, she shouldn’t have any negative associations with the academy. Or failing that, we’ve got plenty of caves,” said Hiccup, gesturing to the ground. One of the Nightmares scuttled over, snuffling snow out of its nose, and sat between Hiccup and Stoick’s feet with a hopeful sort of expression. Rather than push his luck by saying anything further, Hiccup waited for his father to notice and spend a moment looking down at the hatchling.

“Fine,” said Stoick finally. “But you’re waiting until after Snoggletog to do anything else about this.”

“Of course.” If nothing else, Hiccup hoped that he was learning when it was best to not push dragon-related questions any further. He drew his cane from its scabbard and attempted a winning smile. “This would be the bit where we go home, right?”

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t quite that simple when the female Nightmare not only followed them but paused every few yards to sniff at something, growl at something, or apparently contemplate eating something. She glared at almost anyone who came near her other than Hiccup or Snotlout, the latter of whom was still carrying one of the hatchlings and had not even complained about the loss of his helmet.

“Are you going to put that down,” said Hiccup, “or are you going to explain to your father why you’ve got seven Monstrous Nightmares following you instead of one?”

Snotlout looked at the hatchling, then at the mother, who was currently fascinated by a cart that had been left outside someone’s house. “Yeah, I’ll pass on that,” he said, letting the hatchling slide to the ground with the others.

“I’ll take them up to the academy,” said Astrid, stepping up on Hiccup’s other side and adjusting a hatchling into her arms as she did so. The Terror was curled around her shoulders, eyes closed and looking as if it was sleeping off the adventure it had dragged Hiccup on. Astrid looked up him and down. “You look like you’ve been out flying all night.”

“Why thank you,” Hiccup replied, “I’ve been working on this look for some hours now.”

He was grateful for the offer, though, not so much because of the tiredness but because neither Elsa nor Gobber had been at the green to see them in. He was almost sure that if anything had been wrong, his father would have told him immediately, but almost doubling their dragon population in one fell swoop was probably something that would need to be immediately addressed.

Astrid turned off first, towards the academy, once one of the hatchlings had been wrestled out of Tuffnut’s grip. His protest that he was only going to use it to set fire to things worried Hiccup specifically because it sounded like an excuse, and whether Tuffnut had other heinous plans or just thought the hatchling was that cute, Hiccup did not want to get involved. Instead he turned his footsteps along the path through the snow which his father was helping to tromp flat, and made his way back to the house.

It was a relief to see light around the edges of the doors and the shutters, and even more so to open the door and be struck by the warmth and the smell of cooking food. Elsa looked up from where she was wiping down the table, and smiled; she looked relaxed, hair neatly tucked up and sleeves rolled up beyond her elbows.

“Look what got dragged back in,” said Gobber. “And where was he?”

“Bringing back a very long story,” Stoick replied before Hiccup had the chance, steering Hiccup into the house and holding the door only just long enough for Toothless to follow them. “Which he will tell us shortly. Go on, get changed.”

It was not unkindly meant, and frankly Hiccup appreciated the opportunity to put on better clothes before getting drawn into the usual hectic preparation for the Snoggletog meal. Tomorrow, the whole village would feast together in the great hall, but Snoggletog Eve was for families.

Hiccup changed quickly, washed his face and hands, and tried not to limp too much on his way back downstairs. Apparently napping on rocky ground was not that great an idea. It was probably going to be better if he was not given too sharp a knife today.

“All right,” announced Gobber, as Hiccup reappeared. He indicated a large iron pot. “You’re on the swede, mash while you talk.”

Stoick might have been the chief, but there was no question about who was in charge when it came to cooking. Much like with laundry, Hiccup did well enough as long as his attention did not wander, but that was an achievement in itself. He would guess that Gobber was enjoying having Elsa around as someone who could be trusted with food.

As all of them tried to fit around the fire and the table, Hiccup explained how he had flown out, how the Terror had led him to the island, and everything that he had found there. He did not even realise until he was talking about the female Nightmare that he had not once been interrupted, that Gobber and Elsa were clearly both listening as they worked and that Stoick was simply watching, expression guarded, as he turned the haunch of boar on its spit over the fire.

“And so she’s in the academy. For now,” he added quickly. “Astrid’s taken her up there. I’ll probably go and check on her tomorrow?”

It was only a little bit of a question, and he looked at his father hopefully. Although he sighed, Stoick also nodded, and Hiccup grinned.

“You should come, Elsa,” he added. She looked round in surprise from her work, tying up the bundles of cabbage-wrapped spiced grain which would be baked again when they were all done. “Another dragon. She’ll want to stay with the hatchlings at first, I’m sure, but Meatlug was happy enough to leave them for a while and come flying with us.”

She smiled hesitantly, and looked down at her hands. “Thank you for the offer, Hiccup.”

It wasn’t really an answer, but Hiccup was used to having to back off. True, it stung a little that she was implying a refusal to his implied offer to become the dragon’s rider and carer, but perhaps he should not have bought it up so immediately. He just could not imagine going back to a time before dragons. Hiccup looked up to where Toothless was lying in the rafters, head hanging down as he watched the to-and-fro beneath him. A time before dragons was a time before Toothless, and that seemed a long way off now.

The daylight waned outside as Gobber continued to organise them, using his hook to manoeuvre the hottest pots around the fire where those of them with hands would have needed heavy gloves. The Nadder eggs, as well, were still there, and a barrel of water had been set beside the fire for when they looked likely to hatch. It made the fire more full than ever, and it was not long before Elsa was moving plates over to the table and Gobber waved a warning hook in Toothless’s direction.

“Humans first,” he said, then relented. “But Brynnhild bought up a few pout that got themselves caught.”

Toothless kneaded the beam with his front paws and shrieked loud enough for Stoick to wince in the confined space.

“You’re welcome,” said Gobber. He swapped his hook for a knife again, and slid it into the side of the boar. “Aye, I think we’re good. Boar ahoy!”

Hiccup grabbed Elsa by the sleeve and tugged her out of the way as Gobber and Stoick each took one end of the spit and lifted the boar out of the fire. “Tradition,” he said by way of explanation. She just nodded as Stoick scooped up a large wooden platter onto which the boar was deposited. A furrow around the edge led down to a bowl large enough to dip bread into.

“Gobber has been telling me all about Snoggletog traditions,” she said, with a glance to Hiccup that said far more than her mild tone of voice ever could.

“Shivering Shores ones as well, huh?”

She nodded, and Hiccup had to stifle a smile at the fact that Gobber had apparently found a whole new captive audience for his reminiscing. For a long time, it had been Hiccup at the forge hearing such stories, as only Stoick had the ability to get Gobber to stop talking about them, but even he had probably heard all of them over the years. No doubt Gobber had been talking Elsa’s ear off for the day.

He leant closer, and lowered his voice. “Sorry.”

Elsa glanced across to him, and he saw her smile for a moment before hiding it behind her hand and going back to her work once again. Once the boar was in place, it became an increasing hurry to get all of the food to the table before the meat became completely cold, with Gobber ducking into the back bedroom for a short while before reappearing with antlers on his helmet and holly strung through them. Elsa stared; Hiccup could not help it and started laughing.

Despite Stoick’s disapproving look, it only got worse when Toothless reached down and tried to bat at Gobber’s head. Hiccup had to lean on the table, even as Gobber clipped him round the ear and kept working with a dignity that his headwear did not at all deserve.

Before he got relegated to the leftovers of dinner, Hiccup regained control of himself and helped to finish serving up as Stoick moved chairs into place. The food had tended towards one end of the table, and it was there that Stoick’s chair was placed, with one for Gobber on one side and two, somewhat narrower, ones on the other

“Come on,” said Stoick. “We’re ready. Let’s get Snoggletog properly started.”

 

 

 

 

 

The sky outside darkened as they ate, conversation bouncing back and forth between the fuller stores for the winter, the upcoming Svenson-Odourgard wedding, and the tasks that Gobber was finding himself with at the smithy. He asked Hiccup about the Gronckle iron, and the mirror on which he was supposed to have been working the last few days, and before Hiccup knew it he was talking about melting points and ductility, emphasising his points with his knife, until Stoick apparently gave up and reached over to stuff a slice of bannock into Hiccup’s mouth.

Gobber began laughing uproariously, and Hiccup spluttered around the bannock and what was left of his dignity.

“Honestly,” said Stoick. “What have I said about blacksmithing at the dinner table?”

“That we can’t fit the anvil in,” said Hiccup. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Can I talk dragons instead?”

Stoick sighed. “Give me strength.”

He was just weighing up whether it would be worth teasing his father further when there was a loud cracking sound from behind him. Frowning, Hiccup looked up for Toothless, but he had vanished from the rafters and was not lurking pointedly at Hiccup’s elbow, either. “Bud?”

It should not have been this easy to misplace a dragon. There was another crack, but this one bought with it a flash of orange-red light, brighter than the background fire, and Hiccup realised what was happening just a moment too late.

He caught Gobber’s eye across the table.

“The eggs explode.”

Perhaps it was not the most clarifying of statements, but if that was the case then they would probably need to agree what should be shouted in the case of hatching – that was to say, exploding – dragon eggs. Hiccup ducked, covering his head and taking shelter in his chair, as the next sound was indeed an explosion, and bits of flaming shell shot in every direction.

Another explosion followed. Hiccup closed his eyes and wished that they had been looking closely enough to spot the rocking and small movements which Gobber had told them would precede the hatching. Or that at least the eggs had not been right out in the open. One by one, the others followed, either with a remarkably predictable timing or just triggered one after the other. Only a few solid seconds of silence, apart from the thundering of his heart in his ears, Hiccup opened his eyes again and turned to peer over the back of his chair.

One of the Nadder hatchlings was still in the fire, shaking its head and staggering away from the cooking pot that had been left there to keep warm. The others were nowhere to be seen, at least until Toothless bounded down the stairs with one in his mouth. Apparently putting the eggs underwater to hatch had the advantage of keeping them together as well.

The smell of burning hair caught Hiccup’s attention, and he turned around in time to see his father pinching out a small smouldering section of his beard. He caught Hiccup’s eyes, and said nothing.

“Sorry, Dad.”

Well, it had been a while since those familiar words had made their way out. Stoick got to his feet and looked around the room. “Well,” he said levelly, “let’s get some sand on those fires, shall we? Hiccup, find the hatchlings.”

Hiccup got to his feet sheepishly. He could hear the chirps of the hatchlings as Toothless placed the one he had found beside its sibling in the fire, but there were small sounds coming from elsewhere in the room as well, and a rattling of pottery which probably indicated where at least one of the others had ended up.

Leaving the fire to his father’s discretion, he went in search of the rattling, grabbing a piece of smoked fish off the table as he did so. There was a piece of shell and a patch of liquid still burning along the way, but he was not the one with the sand and he knew better than to try to stamp out dragon fire. More likely he would just set his boot alight once again.

Naturally, the rattling was coming from the dark corner where the taller jars of oil, grain and salt stood, and as Hiccup reached them he had to lean over and attempt to peer down. “Hey there, little fella,” he said, holding out the piece of fish. “You hungry? I bet that was hard work.”

A glance over his shoulder told him that nothing was drastically on fire, which would do for now. His father could worry about that. There was a squeak from somewhere amid the pots, and a couple of them rattled.

“Yeah, you’ve found the most awkward corner possible.” Hiccup stuck his hand down in roughly the direction of the rattling, and felt his fingers get nipped as the hatchling pulled the fish out of his hand. “There we go.”

He jammed his other hand after the first and groped around until he found the Nadder and pulled it up from between the jars. It was still a bit slimy, blinking in the firelight and waving its wings more than flapping, but it looked almost golden and gave a happy trilling sound as it caught sight of Hiccup. He grinned in response, cradled it to his chest, and bought it back over to join the others. The two of them were standing at the edge of the fire, one reddish and the other more green-brown, and they hopped in place at the sight of their sibling.

“Now, where has the other one of you managed to get?” Hiccup backed up a few steps and looked around, but there was no other telltale rattling or squeaking from anywhere else. The fires had been extinguished now, and Gobber was sweeping up the small piles of sand from where they had gathered. “Toothless, any ideas?”

It had been him who retrieved the first one. He was now sitting on his haunches and looking upwards to Hiccup’s room, and Hiccup crossed to the foot of the stairs and looked up to see the fourth hatchling sitting in his doorway and looking a little confused. It was the same red-orange as its mother, and the thought made Hiccup’s chest ache just a little.

“There you are,” he said softly. He took the first couple of steps, only for the hatchling to turn towards him, overbalance, and tumble down in his direction with a wild succession of squeals. Hiccup snatched it up as it came within reach, making what he hoped were soothing sounds to dragons, and ran one hand over in search of any injuries.

Mercifully, it seemed that baby dragons were sturdier than they looked; Hiccup supposed they would have to be, to survive being flung about on hatching. There were no cuts or scrapes, and it quietened down as it nuzzled into Hiccup’s chest and half-chuffed against his shirt.

“It’s all right,” he said quickly, seeing the concern in his father’s expression, the fear in Elsa’s. “Just took a tumble.”

“Maybe we should call that one Hiccup Junior,” said Gobber. He was standing back from the other hatchlings, looking them over as they nuzzled against and headbutted each other. “I remember you struggling with those stairs when you were young.”

“I remember struggling with those stairs this autumn,” Hiccup retorted. He bought the hatchling over, to set it down with the others. Four of them, all hatched safely. A smile spread across his face again as he reached out to them, and they all struggled to sniff his hand at the same time. “We’ll introduce you guys to Stormfly tomorrow, all right?”

Stoick patted Gobber on the shoulder. “Might be time for that pout,” he said.

“Aye, I guessed as much.”

 

 

 

 

 

It was not how Hiccup would have expected to be spending Snoggletog. He ended up sitting on the floor with the hatchlings mostly in his lap, taking it in turns to eat the fish that he was cutting up to give to them. Toothless sat beside him, watching but staying out of the way, and truth be told it was hard for Hiccup to even turn his attention beyond that circle. When he did, he looked up to see Elsa sitting at the table watching them with a fond, sad smile, which she hid as soon as she realised he was looking and which he was not sure it was his place to comment on.

Skyfire and Silversnap had been tame enough, but the Nadder hatchlings seemed to adore him in an instant, climbing on his legs and falling off again, licking his hands in search of the last bit of fish guts or blood. He had slime and blood on his shirt, his backside was starting to get sore from sitting on hard wood, but all that Hiccup knew was that he was grinning like a fool at the four Nadder hatchlings sitting in front of and on him.

He wished that he could tell them that he was sorry that he had not been able to save their mother. He wished more that he had been able to. But perhaps it was better this way, that all that they would know was that there would be humans – and other dragons, he hoped – who would look after them. That they would never have to grow up to think of humans as something to fight.

Or perhaps he was just taking this a little too personally.

He ran his hands over the short spines on the Nadder’s heads, and scratched them under their huge chins. They already had teeth, and as small as they were they were already sharp enough for him to end up with a few painful spots on his fingers before the fish were eaten and the hatchlings started curling up with their heads on him and dozing off. Though Hiccup had not intended for that to happen, he could not bring himself to peel them off, even if it probably would have been to return them to the warmth of the fire.

Gobber wandered over and leant against the wall by Hiccup’s head, biting into a somewhat brown crabapple as he did so. “You happy there, then?”

“I’m not sure they’re going to reply,” said Hiccup, looking upwards.

“Who said I was talking to them?” Smiling, Gobber adjusted his antlered helmet, then shook his head. “Dragons on Snoggletog. You certainly have changed things.”

Last year’s Snoggletog had not been a bad one. There had been enough food, and the storms had not been too severe, and there were certainly worse winters than that. But Hiccup could never have anticipated Toothless, or Elsa, or dragon hatchlings. Frankly, he could not even have predicted that they would have a winter with the best stores for years.

“It wasn’t just me,” said Hiccup. He looked over at Toothless, who cocked his head and chirped softly. “Yes, you. I’m pretty sure he knows when we’re talking about him.”

Gobber chuckled. “I won’t disagree with that. You teach him that trick, or did he come up with it himself?”

“Sometimes, I think that it’s him teaching us,” said Hiccup. He reached out one hand to Toothless, who rubbed his nose gently against it. It never went away, the rushing feeling in his chest and the thrill that ran through him when he felt the touch of dragon skin against his own. Every time he looked at Toothless’s eyes, he felt like he saw new patterns in the green there, new depths of brown and highlights of gold that shifted and shone with each movement of Toothless’s pupils.

Gobber cleared his throat, and Hiccup jumped. “When you’re done,” he said, laughter warming his voice. “If you want some of that rhubarb pudding, now would probably be the time.”

Trader Johann was, at the very least, getting better at bringing enough sugar for Berk’s appetites. It was something of a slow process, though, and Snoggletog was one of the few times of year that you could be sure of getting something with sugar, and not just honey, to sweeten it. Hiccup craned his neck to look over at the table, then down at the hatchlings with a touch of regret. “Would I have to get up?”

On this one, Gobber looked over to Stoick, who was busily not noticing Elsa still picking at bread and dripping behind him. At least Berk knew how to treat the hungry. Stoick looked at the pile of Nadder hatchlings now snoring gently in Hiccup’s lap, and gave a sigh that was clearly a surrender. “I think we can make an exception for this one,” he said. Before Hiccup’s grin could grow to wide, he pointed a warning finger. “Just this once, though.”


	23. Chapter 23

Toothless might have been too large to fit on the bed, but the hatchlings were not, and were apparently canny enough to realise that Hiccup would not have the heart to remove them. He ended up with all four of them following him up the stairs and climbing onto the bed after him, which only served to make him grateful that he had thrown an older, scruffier blanket over the top a couple of nights before.

He slept soundly, with only the faintest sensation of dreaming and no clear images, and awoke the next morning to the sound of enthusiastic, if out-of-tune, singing from the floor below.

“Sing now of summer, of sunshine, of clear skies  
Winter is wending its way.  
Nights fit for feasting, and friends by the fireside,  
Down on this Snoggletog day.”

With a groan, Hiccup put his hand over his eyes, but it was hard to stay annoyed when Gobber was clearly enjoying himself and as he realised the pools of warmth on either side of his legs were not part of his imagination but the Nadder hatchlings, rumbling away as they slept. Hiccup sat up as best he could with his legs trapped and looked over to Toothless, who was looking at the stairs with a slightly concerned tilt of his head.

“Happy Snoggletog, bud,” he said. Toothless looked round, licked his lips, and gave a short, warm yelp. Hiccup grinned. “Yeah, you too.”

It was with no small regret that he wormed his legs out from between the Nadders, trying not to disrupt them but failing completely and getting treated to four sets of confused looks instead. Then one of them jumped up and headbutted him in the chest with a chirp, and the others started tumbling over themselves to climb on him, jumping up and opening their mouths hopefully.

He laughed as he squirmed to the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry! No, I don’t have breakfast for you up here... let me get downstairs and get some.” He finally managed to extricate himself and grabbed his foot, as the hatchlings investigated the edge of the bed and looked down as if it was a cliff face. “Oh, come on, you climbed up there last night. It’s not that scary.”

Apparently the talking to dragons thing only got worse the more dragons that there were. Shaking his head at himself, Hiccup stood up and stretched his arms, then ran a hand through his hair as he walked round to the foot of the bed where his helmet should have been. It was not much of a real one, just the leather cap with a metal band and stubby horns that he had worn as a child before his head had outgrown it, but it did for Snoggletog and Stoick still insisted on them all leaving their helmets out overnight. Hiccup would have joked about telling him, but he knew full well that Stoick was the one putting things in the helmets anyway.

The helmet was gone. Hiccup stopped, frowning, and stared at the empty space for a moment before looking up at the hatchlings as if they were to blame. Four looks of complete innocence answered him. He turned to Toothless, ready to just ask the rhetorical question, when he saw that the helmet had made its way from the foot of his bed to the edge of Toothless’s slate, and that the items in it did not at all resemble the usual gifts.

“What’s going on?” said Hiccup slowly. Toothless flicked his plates in what was probably the dragon equivalent of a shrug.

Nothing was simple anymore, was it? Hiccup crossed to the helmet and carefully knelt down. Inside was a small bag that had what looked like dragon nip poking out of the top, a couple of buckles about the size to be spares for Toothless’s saddle, and three dried fish. A small label had been tied around one of the horns, and on it was written, in Stoick’s small, careful handwriting, _‘Property of Toothless’_.

Hiccup looked at Toothless. “Not sure it’s going to fit you, but there you go.”

Toothless licked his lips again. Suspecting that the hatchlings were probably not going to have much more patience on the breakfast front either, Hiccup gave up, stood up, and returned to his clothes-chest to get dressed. When one of the hatchlings looked a little too interested in the helmet, or at least the fish therein, he moved it to the floor, out of their reach.

“Speak now of springtime, of sprouting and sporting,  
You’ll see how yearly we yearn,  
But gods they act goodly, and great friends they grant us;  
Life’s never lonely, you’ll learn."

Elsa was probably going to be learning some new words again today, or at least new ways to arrange them. With the hatchlings helped down onto the floor, Hiccup made his way over to the stairs, with a glance over his shoulder to make sure that they were following him. Toothless was watching, plates down and expression unimpressed, but when Hiccup motioned him over he stood up with a huff and padded after them.

It felt as if he was at the head of a procession as he made his way downstairs. Gobber was building up the fire, antlered helmet in place, having dropped down to humming rather than singing by now. As Hiccup started to climb down, Gobber saluted with his right hand. “Happy Snoggletog!”

“Morning, Gobber,” said Hiccup. He almost tripped over one of the hatchlings and caught at the balustrade to stop himself. One of the buckles, and two fish, fell out of the helmet and dropped to the floor below. “Thor!”

“I’ve got them,” said Gobber. “You’ve got quite the following there.”

“At least the twins don’t get under my feet quite as much,” said Hiccup. He carefully picked his way to the bottom of the stairs and held out the helmet for Gobber to put everything back into. “Thanks. Everyone else up yet?”

“No sign of Elsa yet, but...” Gobber trailed off as Hiccup peered around him. The door to Elsa’s room was just opening. “I spoke too soon, didn’t I?”

“Immaculate timing, as always,” Hiccup reassured him. “Happy Snoggletog, Elsa!”

“Happy Snoggletog,” she said, pronouncing the word carefully, and as far as Hiccup was concerned far more delicately than it deserved. She was wearing a long, plain black dress that Hiccup had not seen before and which had definitely not come second-hand. Her hair was still loose, and she was holding a helmet in one hand, this one iron with a copper band around the edge. She held it out towards them both. “This was in my room?”

Hiccup glanced up at Gobber, who winked. “I have no doubt,” said Hiccup, letting Gobber return to the fire before walking towards Elsa, “that somewhere in yesterday’s introduction to Snoggletog, Gobber mentioned leaving helmets out for treats from Odin?”

“He said that children did so,” said Elsa, but with her eyebrows raised in a way that managed to adeptly suggest that she knew where this was going.

“Children, and my father,” Hiccup replied. He gestured with the helmet clutched in his own hand. “Even Toothless apparently has a helmet, even though mine seems to have been appropriated for the job.”

He finished dryly, with a look in Gobber’s direction, and was ignored in favour of whistling a different Snoggletog tune and feeding scraps of something to the hatchlings. Hiccup suspected that he knew where the answer was therefore going to be coming from, but wasn’t sure exactly what form it was going to take. In any case, he gently steered the helmet in Elsa’s hand back towards her body. “And what Gobber is blithely refusing to say is that this is his Snoggletog present to you.”

Elsa looked down at her helmet, which contained the rather more human-appropriate gifts of a small golden-yellow candle, a small cake studded with dried fruit, a spring of pine and pinecone, and a bar of soap. He knew that at the bottom there would also be a quarter-skiilan, the smallest piece of Arendellen currency but still a novelty around Berk. They were the same things which usually made it into Hiccup’s helmet each year.

She looked round. “Thank you, Gobber.”

“All right,” said Stoick, appearing in the doorway to his room. “If we’re starting up, then it’s presents on the table.”

Hiccup could not help groaning. “I only just got _down_ the stairs.”

“It’s good practice,” said Gobber, without even missing a beat and capably ignoring Hiccup’s exasperated expression. At least he was effectively distracting the hatchlings, Hiccup supposed, which would make getting back up and down again easier.

“Wrap everything in a blanket,” he said to Elsa. “Keep them guessing as long as possible.”

“I heard that!” said Stoick.

Laughing, Hiccup made as swift an escape as he was able, sliding his old helmet onto the table and gesturing for Toothless to stay downstairs. The stairs were getting easier with time, and he could climb them normally rather than having to pause with both feet on the same step each time. He had just about finished Gobber’s present in time; it was no heavily ornamented and beautiful text like the ones that were produced in other kingdoms, but it had everything that Hiccup could remember or think of to add. Even Toothless was now pictured, making it the first book of dragons to have information about the Night Fury. Hopefully that would make up for the hurriedness of some of the other drawings.

Compared to that, the presents for his father and Elsa had been easier. They, however, were not replacing something that Hiccup had managed to get incinerated. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

He wrapped them all up in a blanket – not the one on which the baby dragons had been sleeping and drooling – and just about resisted the temptation to slide down the balustrade to get back downstairs again. Everyone else had still managed to beat him to the table, however, with more or less neatly folded bundles in front of them. The habit of wrapping everything in a blanket was shamelessly borrowing from the Southern Isles, Hiccup knew, and their habit of using fabric to individually wrap each item. Going that far would be just too much of a waste around Berk.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, before anyone could ask.

Gobber snorted. “Take your time. Cripple’s privilege.”

More of an excuse for slowness than Hiccup had ever had whilst he had still been in possession of both feet, but he was not sure that he yet wanted to take up the jokes with which Gobber seemed so comfortable. He concentrated on not limping on his way over to the table, not wanting to get told off for that today, and slid his bundle into place. “All right. We good?”

Stoick was smiling warmly, the way that Snoggletog always seemed to brighten him up and make him act more like a _father_ than a _chief_. Not that it was always flattering for him to be acting like Hiccup was still young enough to go looking for goats’ hoofprints the following morning, but Hiccup could not begrudge it to him. Gobber was trying to remove a hatchling from his boot. But Hiccup could see the tension still in Elsa, the tightness in her shoulders and the way that she held her hands clasped just a little too tightly in front of her. He caught her eye and smiled gently, waiting for her to take a steady breath before looking back up to his father.

“In which case,” said Stoick, “a good Snoggletog to you all, and may a good end to this year mark a great start to the next.”

“Hear, hear,” said Gobber, and whipped the blanket off his gifts so dramatically that he almost caught Stoick with the end of it. Stoick sighed, but more calmly revealed his own offerings, and Hiccup and Elsa followed suit. Toothless gave a rumble of interest and tried to put his front paws on the table to get a better look, and Hiccup had to steer him back down once again before overexcitable Night Fury became the main event of the table.

“Bud, let me pass these out!” He managed to get Toothless to compromise by putting his chin on the table, and picked up Elsa’s gift to hand to her. It was a bone comb, not heavily decorated but at least new and whole and hers, unlike the one which she had been using up to now. He knew that Arendellens did not tend to focus so much on hair as Vikings did, and suspected that Wildlings would tend more to the southern than the northern way of thinking, but perhaps Elsa would have started to pick things up along the way. “Here. Happy Snoggletog.”

Elsa looked, astonished, from Hiccup to the comb and back again. “You have already given me the fabric,” she said, with a gesture to her dress.

“That was Snoggletog clothes. This is a Snoggletog present,” he said, though he understood when her expression remained slightly dubious. It was more than that, as well, though Hiccup would not admit it. It was an apology for spending so much time focusing on the dragons, and simply trusting Elsa to take to the Viking way of life. It was also, he supposed, a way of congratulating her for seeming to have done so.

He held out the comb until Elsa gently took it from his hand, holding it up almost delicately to look over the shape of the teeth. She gave a tender smile. “Thank you, Hiccup. And,” she picked up a folded piece of red cloth and passed it back to him. “Happy Snoggletog.”

Where the red had come from, he had absolutely no idea, but unfolded it with a flick of his wrist. It took him a moment to recognise the shape – straight along one edge, almost dentate like one half of a leaf, with five long narrow seams sewn into it. The horned skull, a Viking symbol, was painted on in thick white. Realisation slowly dawned, and Hiccup gave a delighted laugh, spinning to face Toothless. “Toothless, look! It’s a new fin for you, bud!”

He held it out for Toothless to sniff, then up again, and finally stepped across to hug Elsa. She gave a yelp of surprise as he squeezed her tightly, but relaxed and patted his arm as Gobber laughed and even Stoick chuckled.

“Well, we know how to cheer him up,” said Gobber.

Since being left on Dragon Island in the snow, Toothless’s previous tail had been starting to soften and lose tension, for all that Hiccup had been trying to keep the wool waterproof. As if sensing that he was the topic of conversation, Toothless shrieked, then looked at Hiccup with his mouth slightly open and the corner curving in a way that might just have been a smile. “We,” said Hiccup, waving the new fin like a flag. “Will try this out later.” He gathered his giddy thoughts, returned to his own place rather than standing over Elsa’s, and cleared his throat before picking up his father’s present. “Sorry. I totally missed what you guys swapped.”

His father had a new pair of bracers sitting in front of him, stiffened leather with a knotwork pattern tooled into the surface and small iron spikes, blunt but just large enough to make it impossible to grab in a fight. Gobber, on the other hand, was rubbing fabric against his cheek with a contented sigh, and when Stoick saw Hiccup looking faint colour actually rose in his cheeks.

“There’s a barrel of iron down at the smithy,” said Stoick. “That’s the main present.”

“And new skivvies,” crooned Gobber. “Ooh, these are marvellous.”

Hiccup bit the inside of his cheek. At least it had been some time since Elsa had first learnt the word ‘skivvies’, and that was not also going to need explaining. “Well, on that cheery note,” he said instead, handing over his father’s present.

Looking a little relieved for the topic of discussion to have moved away from Gobber’s underwear, Stoick accepted the large, oval belt buckle which Hiccup offered him. It was a flat disk of iron, Berk’s dragon crest raised on the front, teeth and eyes and a fine raised border all picked out in almost the last of the Gronckle iron. Stoick held it up so that the light of the fire caught it, looking surprised and, unless Hiccup was wildly wrong, a little impressed.

“You made this?”

“Well, I had a little help from the goblins that live in the furnace,” said Hiccup. His father sighed, and he laughed. “Yes, Dad! In the last seven years I have actually learnt my way around the smithy.”

“Aye, he hardly gets lost at all nowadays,” added Gobber.

There was an outburst of chirruping from under the table, and Toothless ducked underneath it before Hiccup got there. The hatchlings were squabbling over one of the fish that had been in ‘Toothless’s’ helmet, and Hiccup left them to it with a shake of his head.

He had already seen Gobber’s present to Elsa, though she didn’t seem to have braved actually wearing it yet, and knew what Elsa would be presenting in return. It was still nice, though, to watch Gobber’s slow dawn of comprehension as he figured out where he had seen something like the banner before. “Arendellen! I like it,” he said firmly. “For those who aren’t so good with the letters, no doubt.”

Everyone in Berk knew where the smithy was, and almost all of them would do well enough to be able to read it, but Hiccup supposed that there might be visitors or that – just maybe – some day the village might start to grow again, rather than decline. In any case, it was attractive, the sewing was as fine as any found in Berk, and Gobber looked truly happy to have hold of it.

“Which probably makes it a good time for me to produce this,” said Stoick, his voice becoming a little less exuberant. He picked up the helmet that sat on the table in front of him, an iron dome reinforced with a strip along the crest and a circlet, iron again and studded with bronze. He was eyeing it with a smith’s appreciation as Stoick walked around the table and gently placed it into Hiccup’s hands. “Your mother...” he took a deep breath, and for a moment it was just the two of them, Hiccup’s hands beneath the helmet and Stoick’s resting on top. “It was from the metal of her armour. As was this.” He rapped his knuckles against one side of his own helmet. “She was proud enough of the babe you were. I wish she could have seen the man that you’ve become.”

The words felt heavy and light at the same time, like a weight in the bottom of Hiccup’s stomach and a bubble of air rising up in his chest. He looked at the helmet, because if he looked his father in the eye right now it would be too much, and swallowed and nodded before even trying to reply aloud. “Thank you, Dad,” he said softly. He put one hand on top of his fathers for a moment, squeezed, and Stoick turned his hand over to squeeze back so tightly that Hiccup would have sworn that the bones in his hands clicked together. Then he finally stepped away, and as Hiccup stood holding the helmet it came back to him that the others were there, not just Toothless but Elsa and Gobber as well, and he found a laugh from somewhere as he put the helmet carefully on the table in front of him. “Well, I don’t think I can really beat that for the present of the year.”

“It’s not a competition,” said Stoick. Gobber patted him on the shoulder as he stepped back again. “Besides, your old one was getting too small for you.” He nodded to where it also sat on the table.

For lack of a better response, Hiccup picked up his old helmet and tipped out its contents onto the table. He held up a hand for Toothless to stay still, and carefully balanced the old helmet on top of his head. It stayed there, slightly crookedly. “You know, I was wrong. Maybe it does suit him.”

Gobber was the first one to laugh, and the others followed, until Toothless cocked his head at them all and the helmet slid off. Hiccup caught it as it bounced off the table and set it down again, right side up. “I’m not so sure he agrees,” said Gobber.

“Be that as it may,” said Stoick, “he has had his turn, and as he has not produced presents for the rest of us I am sorry to say he will have to just watch. Aye, you heard me,” he added, directly in Toothless’s direction. Though his eyes looked a little wet, his tone was a little playful again, and the feeling of Snoggletog remained light and buoyant in the room. “And I believe there are a few presents left, so without further ado...”

He picked up the last item before him, a wooden brooch with an iron pin. Curiosity getting the better of him, Hiccup craned his neck to see the pattern on the front, and smiled in amazement as he realised that it was the curl of a dragon – not just any dragon, but undoubtedly a Night Fury, with jagged-edged wings and no horn on its face, picked out in dark pokerwork against the pale wood.

“Thank you.” Elsa smiled, though there was still a little pain in her eyes, as she accepted the brooch. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and set about putting it on, struggling for a moment before managing to get the pin into place on the left side of her chest. She straightened up her dress, glancing up in something close to asking for acceptance, then responded by pushing across the small wooden chest in front of her.

Raising an eyebrow, Stoick turned the box to face him and opened it up. His brow creased in confusion as he looked inside, then plucked out a small, knobbly, black... something. He turned it over in his fingers, still frowning, but when Hiccup looked over to Elsa her smile had become a little more coy. Finally, Stoick raised it to his nose and inhaled deeply, then started laughing.

“Truffles?” he looked across in amazement. “Where, in Odin’s... no,” he said, putting the truffle back into the box and closing the lid. “You may have this secret. Until these run out.”

Truffles were, to judge by Trader Johann’s response whenever someone managed to find some to trade with him, as desirable on just about every other island as they were in Berk and in Arendelle. It was well known that they grew in the Wildlands, but finding them was another matter altogether, especially in winter when there was snow on the ground.

Hiccup put his hand on the replacement Book of Dragons and slid it across to rest in front of Gobber. “I suspect that you already know what this is,” he said dryly, withdrawing his hand to reveal the familiar outline of the Monstrous Nightmare, the only decoration on the front. To judge by Gobber’s smile, and lack of surprise, he had full well guessed. “So Happy Snoggletog. I tried to keep as many of the spelling errors as I could.”

With a laugh, Gobber picked up the book, placing it on his hook and using his hand to carefully open it and turn the pages. It was still crisp, not wrinkled with rain or stray ale, and though Hiccup had tried to keep all of the notes that he could, he had not been able to replicate the different handwriting, the age, the memories. As Gobber flicked through, though, his smile warmed and softened, and Hiccup could see the reminiscence reflected in his eyes, until he finally stopped at a spread and looked it over or longer.

“Now, that’s not how I remember that looking,” he said, showing the page to Stoick, who chuckled as well. Rather suspecting that he knew what page they were on, Hiccup just folded his arms and waited for the end of the joke to arrive. “What do you think?”

Stoick looked from the book to Toothless, then nodded. “Aye, that’ll do.”

“See? All that time spent drawing dragons wasn’t for nothing,” said Hiccup. Gobber casually rapped him on the head with his knuckles. “Hey!”

“On principal,” said Gobber. He closed the book with an emphatic thud, but kept hold of it. “And I suppose that you’ll be wanting your Snoggletog present in return, then.” With his hook, he nudged over the folded leather in front of him.

With some curiosity, Hiccup pulled it over the rest of the way and unfolded it, flicking it out to reveal a leather vest that looked just a touch larger than the one which he was currently wearing. It was smooth, the hair removed, with a fine engraved pattern around the edges. His current one didn’t actually seem to be feeling any smaller, but it was looking ragged and worn, and Snoggletog clothes were, after all, an old tradition. “Thank you, Gobber,” he said.

“Turn it over.”

Hiccup paused, looking between Gobber and Stoick, then glanced over to Elsa. She shrugged, fingers of her left hand still lingering on the brooch at her breast. “All right,” said Hiccup slowly, and turned the vest over.

It had a Night Fury on the back. Curling round in almost a full circle, wings arcing out from its back, a deeper brown against the leather. Hiccup slowly smiled as he ran his hands around it, all the way to the tail with only one fin, and felt his chest tighten up again just at the sight of it all. Then Toothless nudged against his thigh, and he had to close his eyes for a moment, with the people and the dragons around him, the helmet from his mother like a ghost at one hand, and now this visual, visceral acceptance beneath his hands.

He was crushed into someone’s side in a hug that drove the breath out of him, and only then opened his eyes to see that it was Gobber, who had been standing closer anyway. “Thank you. Really,” he said, and if it sounded strained he hoped that it would only seem to be because of the hug.

“Go on, put it on,” said Gobber. “I know you’ve got some deliveries of your own to be doing.”

“Not sure that they’ll fit in peoples’ helmets,” said Hiccup. He picked up the vest and pulled it on, the leather a little stiff and fitting oddly on the shoulders. That would soften in time, though. Even if the Night Fury was on the reverse, it was as if he could feel it, as warm against his back as if he was standing beside Toothless once again. After only a slight hesitation, he picked up the helmet and put that on as well. It was just a touch bigger than snug, but not unwearable. “All right. Elsa, did you want to come?”

“Come where?”

It was taking a surprising strength of will not to keep fiddling with the vest, tugging it closed or open across his chest, and Hiccup settled for resting one hand on Toothless’s head. “I made saddles for the others, for Snoggletog. Gobber has very kindly let me borrow a cart from the smithy to deliver them with. Did you want to come and be the Snoggletog goat with me?” He caught himself as Elsa frowned. “It’s what delivers the presents, in kids’ stories. I think it’s the same in Arendelle.”

“I don’t remember,” she said, with a slight shrug, finally removing her hand from the brooch. She crossed her hands across her middle, gently rather than as tight as usual, but nodded. “But I would like to, yes.”

 

 

 

 

 

He had originally expected that pushing the cart around would be harder than walking, but it rather turned out that having something to lean on was easier. It was just the snow that made it harder, and the occasional snowball that was thrown across his path by the children playing in the snow.

“Hey, Hiccup!” Snotlout shouted, from somewhere off to his left. Hiccup ducked automatically, and the snowball flew past his head, smacking into a snowdrift behind him. “Damn it!”

Fourteen years of growing up alongside Snotlout had at least given Hiccup some talents, he supposed. “And a happy Snoggletog to you too, Snotlout,” he replied. “Would you like to come and get your Snoggletog present?”

He wasn’t particularly offended when Snotlout hesitated. If anything, it was a compliment compared to being written off as no threat at all. “Just so you know,” said Snotlout, pointing a finger as he started over, “if one of you pushes me into a snowbank, Hookfang will kick your butts.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” replied Hiccup honestly, mostly because there were far more entertaining ways to get Snotlout to throw himself into a snowbank without resorting to brute force. He set the cart down and pulled off the covering blanket, passing it to Elsa. “Now, where is yours...”

“What are _those_?” said Snotlout, looking at the general pile of brown leather that made up the interior of the cart. Hiccup grabbed the appropriate saddle and extricated it from where the straps had tangled up with another one.

“The latest in dragon-riding technology,” he said. When Snotlout continued to look confused, he rolled his eyes. “It’s a saddle, Snotlout, for Hookfang. Well, also for you, but you won’t be the one wearing it. Here.”

Still wearing the same look of confusion, Snotlout accepted the saddle, turning it over to apparently look at it from every conceivable angle. “I didn’t actually get you anything...” he muttered.

“Well, I’ll swap it for fewer complaints about how sore your arse gets after a day’s riding, how does that sound?” To be fair, it was mostly the twins who did the complaining, or at least arguing with each other over which of Barf and Belch’s necks was more uncomfortable, but peace and quiet certainly wouldn’t go amiss on a few other counts either. As Snotlout continued to look uncertain, Hiccup added: “And let me borrow it if I need to check anything while making up a saddle for that female Nightmare.”

“Yeah,” said Snotlout finally “Yeah, I can totally do that.”

“You seen the others anywhere?”

“Which others?”

“Which–?” Hiccup groaned. Some days the workings of Snotlout’s brain really confused him. “The other dragon riders. So I can give out the rest of the saddles. And get Astrid to come pick up the Nadders,” he added, at a mutter of his own. As cute as the hatchlings were, he could not help thinking that they would do better with a female of their own species to care for them.

Either Snotlout didn’t hear it, or he picked up that Hiccup was not in the mood for more questioning. Hugging the saddle to his chest with one arm – not that he probably would have admitted the word – he pointed further towards the centre of the village. “I saw Fishlegs and his sisters making a Snow Gronckle. And I think the twins were trying to melt the icicles off the Tree.”

“The large tree, made of wood?” said Elsa. Even she sounded dubious at the idea of letting Barf and Belch near a very large wooden object, even if such dubiousness could frankly be put down to having any sort of common sense at all. Snotlout just nodded, eyes flickering over Elsa’s new dress even as he kept a poker-straight expression which was very clearly meant to hide the fact that he was looking it over.

In any case, Elsa was absolutely right. At some time in the past, the Tree had apparently been a real pine, cut down and dragged into the village. Somewhere along the line, though, it had changed into the piled-up wooden creature that it was today, which thanks to being made of less green wood would probably be _more_ flammable than before. “Oh, well, that’s just going to end marvellously,” said Hiccup. “Come on, we’d better see if we can stop them before they provide us with a lighthouse.”

“Oh, right,” said Snotlout. “Uh, happy Snoggletog.”

“And you,” said Hiccup. He grabbed the handles of the cart, and shook his head when Elsa went to throw the blankets back over again. It wasn’t snowing just at the moment, at least. “Hope that you win against whoever you were supposed to be having a snowball fight with.”

“Whatever,” said Snotlout. “Me and Hookfang are going to go try out this saddle. Hey, Hookfang! Get your butt over here!”

Shaking his head, Hiccup moved them off again, having to give the cart a bit of a shove to get it moving over the trampled, uneven snow. “Well, sounds as if at least one person is going to have a fun day.” He could hear Snotlout continued to try to get Hookfang to behave as they continued on, and glanced over to see Toothless walking calmly along.

He wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Snotlout had not commented on the new helmet, and decided that it had probably been a case of being too taken with the saddle. Or possibly too distracted by Elsa’s clothes; plain black as they were, they were still new, and actually fitted her, unlike just about anything else she had managed to find or be given previously. He was still mulling on it, though, when Elsa cleared her throat and, when he looked round, nodded to something behind them.

“I think your vest is gaining some interest,” she said quietly.

Hiccup spun so fast his helmet nearly stayed behind, and he put one hand up to steady it as he saw a group of children, Nobber among them, quickly turning away with a shriek of laughter. Rainbug was there as well, however, and raised a shy hand to wave at Hiccup before turning and running after them. For a moment, he was not quite sure what to think, then he looked at Toothless again and decided that pride was acceptable in this circumstance. “Well, you never know,” he said. “Come on, let’s see if we can find Fishlegs and the others.”

It turned out that Snotlout was, at least for once, entirely correct. Fishlegs and his younger sisters were still working on their Snow Gronckle – Fishlegs carving the teeth with his knife, while his sisters added snowballs to represent the warts – while Meatlug lay and apparently modelled for them, her young chasing each other around in the air above. It was Fishlegs who caught sight of them first, and waved with the hand not currently holding the knife. “Hiccup! Happy Snoggletog!”

“And you!” Hiccup managed to avoid running over one of the smaller children who chose that moment to run straight in front of the cart, sighed, and gave it another shove to get it moving once again. The square was at least more flattened, easier to move the cart over, but Fishlegs gave it the same curious look as Snotlout had. “Nice tunic, by the way.”

Fishlegs looked down at the new tunic he wore, fresh brown leather visible underneath the fur capelet over his shoulders. “Thanks,” he said. “Snoggletog present from my mother and sisters. They helped with the sewing,” he said, turning to the side to show off the seam beneath his left arm. It was noticeably crooked, and probably Piglegs’s work if Hiccup had to guess. “Yours looks good too.”

“You should see the back,” said Elsa, before Hiccup could say anything. It spoilt a little of the surprise, but Fishlegs looked so intrigued that Hiccup shuffled round on the spot.

“Wow!” Fishlegs almost yelped, and the next thing that Hiccup knew the back of his vest was being grabbed and he was pulled over so that Fishlegs could, presumably, examine it more closely. “This is stunning pokerwork... but I mean, it’s Gobber, of course it would be... is that a Night Fury? I can’t really see the wing outline, but the lack of a rhinal horn means that it’s really the only one that I can think of that–”

“It’s Toothless,” said Hiccup, before he was here all day while Fishlegs debated Gobber’s artistry and dragon morphology. “See?” He craned one hand behind his own back, trying to point to roughly where he hoped the tail was. “No fin.”

At least it got him released. Hiccup turned round again, straightening his helmet in what he tried not to make a pointed way. “Oh,” Fishlegs said, “that makes sense. I mean, that it’s Toothless.”

“Again, Snoggletog present.” Hiccup shrugged as he tugged the vest slightly back into place once again. “And speaking of which,” he reached into the cart; Meatlug’s saddle was easier to distinguish from the others, cut larger to fit her, and he pulled it out easily to present to Fishlegs. “For you, and for Meatlug. Snoggletog present.”

Fishlegs looked to the saddle, then up at Hiccup with an expression that was almost panicked. “But I didn’t–” he started.

It was probably the first time in his life that Hiccup had seen Snotlout and Fishlegs react in the same way to something. “You don’t need to, don’t worry.” He saw fishcakes in his future, though, he had to admit. “Think of it as being from the Dragon Academy. Gobber and I just did a bit of the work on them.”

The area was suspiciously quiet, at least compared to what Hiccup would have expected for the twins being in the near vicinity. The Tree was also not on fire, which was a relief but did leave the worrying question of what exactly the twins would consider better than setting fire to an enormous stack of wood.

“Have you seen Ruffnut and Tuffnut?” he said.

“Yeah, their father called them home. Something about Barf and Belch eating things overnight.”

Blaming Barf and Belch for just about anything, when the twins were in the vicinity, was a concept which Hiccup regarded somewhat dubiously, but he supposed that Tuffnut Sr. was more likely to know what the twins could and could not reliably be blamed for. “Well, at least that makes the Tree safer,” he said. “Astrid?”

“Nope, sorry.”

“Well, there’s not too many people in Berk to search through,” said Hiccup. “Thanks anyway. Let me know if the saddle fits,” he added, even though he was pretty sure that it was going to. Even Toothless’s had needed a few tweaks along the way, and if Meatlug wasn’t going to be flying at punishing speeds she was probably going to be testing the limits of the saddle in other ways.

Fishlegs grinned. “We will!”

His sisters were looking over curiously by now, and Hiccup left him to talk to them as he picked up the handles on the cart and tried to turn them in the direction of the twins’ house. It would be easier to drop those two off before going in search of Astrid; one saddle did not need a cart in the way that five had. As they passed one of the houses, a burst of laughter came through the open door, followed by a quick segue into a boisterous song.

“Sounds like someone’s getting the party started early,” said Hiccup. He was feeling buoyant by now, with new clothes and saddles readied, and the dragons back on Berk where it felt more and more like they _belonged_.

Elsa followed him in companionable quiet as they wove around the uneven surface of the snow and out to the Thorstons’ house. Her eyes lingered for a while on the snowman built outside one of the houses, but whether or not that was because of the straw beard and the frankly terrifying coal eyes staring out, it was rather difficult to say. When she reached the Thorstons’ house, though, she frowned and took a few steps down the side. “This place looks familiar.”

It took Hiccup a moment to remember why this house in particular might be relevant. “I stole you some wood from here to make a walking stick,” he finally recalled. “Back in the summer.”

Shading her eyes, Elsa looked over the side of the house again, then up to the roof. “You did.”

With a deep breath that was absolutely meant to brace him, Hiccup squared up to the Thorstons’ door and knocked soundly. It was only a few seconds before a thunder of footsteps approached, the door was yanked open, and first Ruffnut and then Tuffnut popped into view.

“Oh hey Dad Hiccup’s here we gotta–” said Tuffnut at high speed, before both of them were grabbed and dragged backwards again by Tuffnut Sr., who looked Hiccup over in a way that managed to feel markedly disapproving. As if _Hiccup_ were somehow the one to blame for the twins... well, being the twins.

“Hi,” said Hiccup.

Tuffnut Sr. pulled the twins back into the house by the upper arms. “Do you need these two?” he said. Although he was not quite so skilled in bellowing as Stoick was, he was still quite good at it, and unfortunately not at all skilled in lowering his voice again. Hiccup felt as if he was facing into a gale. “Only they’ve got work to be doing today.”

“No, no,” he said quickly. He pulled both of the appropriate saddles out of the cart and held them up, as if presenting evidence. “I just wanted to give them these. As Snoggletog presents.”

Reluctance visible on his face, Tuffnut Sr. released the twins to let them take the saddles out of Hiccup’s hands. Ruffnut held hers up and looked at it sternly, squinting one eye, while Tuffnut turned his over and gave the underside a hearty sniff. Honestly, Hiccup did not even want to know.

“Well,” he added breezily, “if this is a bad time, I should probably leave you guys to it. Let me know if there are any problems with them, and I’ll probably see you at the hall tonight.” He made a grab for the door handle before any of the Thorstons could protest. “Have a good Snoggletog!”

He pulled the door closed, picked up the handles of the cart and made a bid for freedom, trusting that Elsa and Toothless would be along in his wake. Sure enough, he was barely a couple of houses along before Elsa caught up to him, pulling up the hem of her skirt to jog across the snow. “You... do not like him?” she said, as she drew alongside.

“Oh, more that he shouted at me a _lot_ when I was a child, and I’m not sure I ever got over the trauma,” said Hiccup. Elsa raised an eyebrow. “At least when Snotlout tried to make me eat worms, Spitelout would usually intervene. I mean, it would be to say that Snotlout shouldn’t think that sort of thing was gross and should be willing to do it as well, before eating a worm himself, but he’d intervene. Tuffnut Sr. just shouted when the twins didn’t worth _together_ to make me eat worms.”

He only had to pause a moment before he suspected that he knew what Elsa was thinking.

“You’ve eaten worms as well, haven’t you?” he said.

“Yes. Though I wasn’t forced,” she added, as if that somehow made up for it.

Well, there were probably worse things to eat than worms, Hiccup had to admit. Even he had been more concerned about the dirt on the worms than the actual worms themselves, not knowing whether they had been found in normal ground or in someone’s compost heap. “All right,” he said. “Let’s see if we can find where Astrid’s hidden away.”

Somewhere towards the arena, a Monstrous Nightmare roared. Hiccup only took one glance to get his bearings from where they had last seen Snotlout and, by extension, Hookfang, and shrugged as he pulled the cart up alongside the nearest house.

“I can come back and get this later,” he said, scooping up the saddle in one arm and drawing his cane with the other. Having a scabbard on his back was starting to feel almost natural, although he doubted that it was normal for that to come about from using one for a cane. If it put it on his hip, it just banged his good leg all of the time, which was not exactly a help. “At a wild guess, Astrid thought that it would be a good idea to bring the female Nightmare back to me today.”

Elsa looked at him flatly. “I can’t imagine why she’d think that.”


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I'd timed this better, I would have put this chapter out over Christmas, but there you go. Snoggletog ahoy!
> 
> This chapter does contain underage drinking and drunkenness (as the modern day would define it, not in the cultural setting). No dirty songs this time around, though.

It was unsurprisingly simple to find six Monstrous Nightmares, a Deadly Nadder, and Astrid clearly near the end of her tether trying to get them all to calm down. They were at the edge of the village, just at the beginning of the path to the academy, and Astrid was standing between the two dragons as they hissed and roared at each other. The Nightmare hatchlings were trying to hide behind their mother, which might have been easier were the mother and Stormfly not circling each other around Astrid.

“There always has to be one at Snoggletog,” muttered Hiccup. But as he approached, he looked more closely at the body language of both dragons; they were both leaning forward, chests towards the ground, and though Stormfly’s spines were out her tail was lashing from side to side and not arced over her back. Defensive, then, not aggressive. The female Nightmare shrieked, then threw her head back and poured fire into the sky above them, before fixing her eyes on Stormfly again with a snarl. Hiccup thrust the saddle in Elsa’s direction and sped up his pace. “All right, let’s try to get this down.”

Mercifully, it was Stormfly who had her back to him by the time that he approached, and she did not flinch as he stepped past her and into the middle of what was feeling a little bit like the killing ring again.

“What set this off?” he said to Astrid. Without words, they slipped round so that they were back-to-back, Hiccup facing the Nightmare and Astrid facing Stormfly.

“One of the hatchlings nipped at Stormfly’s ankle, and she growled at it.”

“That’s _it_?” He looked at the Nightmare incredulously. “You would get on really well with my father, with that overprotectiveness, you know that? Come on, your babies are fine. Let’s calm this down, huh?” As he stepped forwards, he raised his hand and held it out to her. “You need to tell them not to nip at strange dragons.”

The female Nightmare huffed at him, smoke coiling from her nostrils, but Hiccup held his ground and her gaze until she sighed and reached forward for her nose to brush over his hand.

“You got Stormfly?” said Hiccup, over his shoulder. Astrid made a vague noise of assent. “All right, there we go. Everyone’s calm again.”

He sighed, lowering his hand, and the female Nightmare continued to regard him suspiciously for a moment before bending her head to sniff at her hatchlings instead.

“Nice timing,” Astrid said. Hiccup looked over his shoulder to see her rubbing Stormfly’s neck and watching the Nightmares. “Were you over here by chance, or was there a particular reason?”

All that Hiccup could think of for a moment was the female Nightmare, and he stared blankly at Astrid for a moment while he tried to get his brain to come up with anything more coherent. It was not until he remembered Elsa, standing a way back from the whole scene, still holding the last of the saddles which he had made. “Yes, sorry. Uh, first would be your Snoggletog present, sorry Elsa for making you hold that,” he met Elsa halfway, scooped the saddle out of her arms, and went to present it to Astrid. “Second would be that I was going to ask about our new guest, but I see she’s fine, and third would be to say that the Nadder eggs have hatched, did you want to come meet them?”

All of the words tumbled out, in his old habit of trying to say as much as he could before he got chastised for it, and Astrid looked at him in bewilderment for a moment as she processed everything. Hiccup could almost hear the gears turning as Astrid finally nodded.

“Allllll right,” she said, “let’s break that down. Thank you for the saddle,” she plucked it from his hands and looked it over appreciatively. “I know that I will appreciate it, and I imagine that you will appreciate the decreased reason to complain as well,” she added.

Hiccup resisted the temptation to make a quip, because at that moment the only ones which would come to mind would probably involve the fact that Astrid tended to massage her own backside when she had been flying for too long. Growing up in a house full of men or not, he knew better than to say that. He shrugged instead.

“Secondly, she is indeed fine, if remarkably unappreciative of your help and probably in want of a few barrels of fish.”

“We can sort that,” said Hiccup.

Astrid looked at him pointedly, and he held his hands up in a silent promise not to interrupt again. “And,” she said finally, “I would like to come and meet the hatchlings, but what are we going to do with her in the meantime?”

Dealing with a wild dragon was, Hiccup had to admit, proving to be somewhat more difficult than he had originally anticipated. A wild dragon with hatchlings to be protective of was probably only making things worse. “I have no clue,” he admitted. “She certainly seemed to like Hookfang, though. Maybe she’ll be calmer if he’s around?”

“We don’t really have a pen big enough for both of them,” said Astrid.

“No, but I’m sure we can rustle up an old barn,” he mused. There were some around the edges of town, not least from where people like Lugstick had left. “The doors should be big enough to let her in.”

Astrid looked over his shoulder vaguely, then nodded again. “All right, I can see that. Now, what were you saying about Nadder hatchlings?”

 

 

 

 

 

Hiccup was really going to have to start asking his father before doing ridiculous things like this. But the Nightmare seemed content enough in the old barn, even if she took to immediately rooting out any of the remaining damp hay that had clung on in corners, and the hatchlings amused themselves by climbing up the walls, claws sinking effortlessly into the wood. There were probably worse things that could be done with a Monstrous Nightmare, though, and at least on Snoggletog nobody should be too worried about old, empty barns.

Astrid quizzed him about the saddle on the way back to his house, although she did trail off to look in confusion at the cart as they detoured to retrieve it. Deciding that it was probably better not to try to explain, Hiccup simply let it be.

He opened the door to an immediate scurrying sound, and Gobber shouting, “No! Stop them!”

The hatchlings were all running towards the door, eyes shining and mouths lolling open. Hiccup went to drop to his knee, arms spreading to catch them, but he was firmly headbutted in the small of his back and ended up on his hands and knees instead, rolling aside rather than risk falling on any of the hatchlings.

He made it onto his back and looked into the doorway, which was now mostly full of Stormfly’s face. She huffed, made a gentle squawking sound, and the hatchlings stayed transfixed in front of her as Astrid pushed round her and into the room as well.

“Are you...” she looked around for Hiccup, but then her eyes fell on the hatchlings instead. Her expression softened, a smile spreading across her face, and she crouched down to hold out her hand to them. “Oh, you _babies_! Aren’t you _gorgeous_?”

“Don’t worry,” said Hiccup, propping himself up on his elbows. “I’m fine.”

She gave him an unimpressed look and went back to stroking one of the hatchlings on the head. It was hard to be particularly annoyed, though, when one of the hatchlings was rubbing its chin against his leg and rumbling away to itself, and Hiccup pushed himself back to a sitting position and briefly scratched it on the chin.

Stormfly leant down over Astrid’s shoulder, and the hatchlings began bouncing up and down in front of her nose excitedly. She turned her head slightly to regard them, then grunted. Hearing a sigh from above him, Hiccup looked round to the rather unappealing sight of Gobber as viewed from below, hands on his hips as he surveyed the scene in front of him.

“So,” he said, “you managed to get those saddles handed out, then?”

“Yes, I di- _id_!” he yelped as Gobber pulled him upright once again and flicked his helmet back into place. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. We all have our moments.”

At least for as long as Hiccup had been aware, Gobber’s had been more to do with wilful inebriation than pure lack of coordination. Right now that was honestly looking like something to aim for. From somewhere behind Stormfly, Toothless whined, and if Hiccup craned his neck he could just about see Elsa trying to peer inside. He caught her eye and shrugged for lack of a better response.

“Let me guess, then,” said Astrid. She scooped up one of the Nadders and held it to her chest, where it chirped and wriggled for a moment before sniffing her and rubbing against her chest. “Your next plan was to invite me to adopt these guys, or at least to have Stormfly do so?”

“I wouldn’t say _plan_ as such...”

Astrid gave him a long, slow stare, then looked back to the Nadder cradled against her. It chirruped. “You’re lucky they’re cute,” she said finally. “Come on, help me get them back to the woodshed.”

A barrel of fish later, Stormfly was nestling with the hatchlings and Astrid gave Hiccup one last punch in the arm before pushing him vaguely back in the direction of his house. She was smiling as she did it, though. He meandered home, dodging more snowball fights and children chasing each other around, and shading his eyes to look into the sky as Hookfang rose up into the air, Snotlout in place on his back, before disappearing down again. Apparently the new saddle was fit for purpose.

Toothless greeted him at the door when he returned, with a determined effort to lick his face which Hiccup just about managed to fend off. From inside, Hiccup heard the unmistakeable sound of Stoick chuckling, but by the time that he poked his head around the door to glare his father was sitting quietly in his chair, new bracers on, whittling away at a new chunk of wood.

“Thank you for your assistance,” he said, brushing snow off himself while still in the doorway.

“You bought him home,” said Gobber, with a gesture to Toothless. “You get to deal with him.” He looked round to Elsa, who was sitting beside the fire with a politely enquiring expression. “Where was I?”

“Bork was in the cave of the Scullions,” she replied.

Bork stories again. Hiccup could not help but grin at the fact that Gobber had found a new audience; by the time that anyone was old enough to enter the arena – when it had still been the arena – they would have heard stories about Bork’s misadventures in his youth.

Spying a stray slate beneath one of the benches, chalk still attached to it with a piece of string, Hiccup scooped it up and settled down beside the fire as Gobber got into his story once again. He had heard the stories more times than most, could probably tell them himself by now, and working on the saddles for the others had given him ideas about how he could adjust Toothless’s. He glanced over at his father’s carving, then tilted his head.

“Something happen to that duck?”

It didn’t have much of a neck, for a start, and looked to be curling around on itself. He rather expected his father to sigh, but instead Stoick smiled and held out the piece of wood instead. “You don’t recognise it.”

If honesty was being requested, then Hiccup was not going to miss the opportunity. “Not as a duck, no.”

“Well, last I checked dragons didn’t look much like ducks,” said Stoick, in a tone so breezy that Hiccup would have been proud of it.

It took a moment, and then Hiccup could see it, the raised head not yet shaped and the curves of the wings. He smiled, caught his father’s eye, and nodded. It was there, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

Snoggletog was the shortest day, and the longest night, of the year. Vikings had responded to this by turning it into a night of celebration, of fire and feasting and proof that mere darkness could not hold them back. The excitement in the air grew almost palpable as the day wore on, and as sunset grew close Hiccup called Elsa over to one of the small windows to watch. She looked a little bemused, but then leant on the windowsill to watch as the sun set over the horizon, blazing red and gold just for a short while. As it finally dipped beneath, the great horn blared into the night, and though Elsa jumped at first she then smiled as it continued in single blasts so long that it must have been taking some lungpower.

“Snoggletog night,” he said, with a smile. “Last night of the year.”

Perhaps Elsa understood everything that meant, to judge by the tenderness in her eyes.

“All right!” said Stoick, already in his chiefing frame of mind if the way that his voice filled the house was anything to go by. Hiccup jumped, almost hitting his head on the way. “Let’s get moving up to the Great Hall!”

“Let me just put these new skivvies on...” said Gobber, somewhere in the back bedroom.

Hiccup sighed. “I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear that,” he muttered. At a more normal volume, he added; “Just let me get fresh boots.”

As soon as the plural left his lips, he rolled his eyes at himself. Old habits died hard. Nobody picked him up on it, though, and he was left to his own devices to go upstairs, change his boot, and make an attempt to comb his hair which to be frank ended in his defeat. He smoothed it back to roughly how it had been and made his way downstairs again.

It was Elsa, just emerging from her room, who caught his eye. It had been heartwarming enough to see her in the black dress, properly fitted and falling just to her ankles, high-necked and long-sleeved though it was. He suspected that was to do with having something to hide behind. He had not forgotten the blue-green fabric, though, and apparently neither had she; she had made an overdress of it, wrapping around rather than tying at the back like a more traditional apron. It had one of those curving necklines that he remembered being popular in Arendelle, the two halves of the skirt crossing like flower petals, and was held in place with both her belt and the brooch pinned at her left shoulder. It was the first time that he had seen work of hers more complicated than taking up a hem or sewing up a rip, and he actually stopped in surprise to look her over.

She caught his gaze, and paused, looking nervous. “It is... all right?”

“Yeah,” he said softly. It was still quite plain, but so were most clothes on Berk once you discounted the armour and weapons which Elsa did not wear. Though she did have the Gronckle iron knife, now in a rather better sheath, on her belt. “It looks good.”

Elsa gave a shy smile and looked down to her folded hands. He could just see the trollwort bracelets around her wrists. Hopefully she would feel safer with them on.

Before Stoick, frowning, could say anything over them, Gobber emerged from the bedroom straightening his belt and grinning absurdly to himself. “Oh, those are nice,” he said.

“If we could try to avoid discussing underwear tonight, I would deeply appreciate it,” said Stoick, sounding just a touch pained. Hiccup hid his laughter in a cough. He gestured to the door. “Come on. We’ve got quite the party this year.”

Stoick made it to the door first and held it open for them, even if he sighed when Toothless was the first one to actually exit the house, head up and looking around excitedly. Hiccup ducked out in turn, looking around to see the doors of other houses opening as well, adults and children all spilling out, chattering and laughing to each other. He could even here some singing, already starting to go out of tune. To be fair, that did not necessarily mean that the singers were drunk. It was entirely possible that they were just bad at singing.

When all of Berk turned out, it could manage to feel like a crowd, but mercifully having a dragon was a good way to clear a path through those. He caught sight of Snotlout by the door to the Great Hall, though Hookfang was nowhere to be seen on this occasion, and was not all that surprised to see Meatlug wading through the crowd as well. It was a little more surprising to see Piglegs and Froglegs on her back, clinging to the saddle and shrieking with delight as Fishlegs led them all by the bridle, but for all of the staring and pointing that they were getting there did not seem to be any ill-will towards them.

As they entered, he caught sight of Pinebolt and Burplout already sitting at one of the benches, to the back of the hall where it would be quieter and where it was less likely that there would be any quaffing or dancing going on. When he caught sight of the baby in her arms, Hiccup smiled again, and grabbed Elsa’s hand where she had been staying carefully close to Toothless as well.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go meet my cousin.”

“What?” said Elsa, but Hiccup was already ploughing through the crowd, or at least weaving to the edge of the Great Hall where it would be easier to make his way back. He aimed for the side away from the barrels of mead, knowing full well that it was going to be the less busy one.

He released her hand before they reached Pinebolt and Burplout, not wanting a repeat of the first time that he had introduced Elsa to them, and looked around for Wartlout but could not catch sight of him. Probably somewhere that involved food, then. Burplout stood up as they approached, and Hiccup just about braced himself in time for the rib-crushing hug that followed.

“Merry Snoggletog!” said Burplout.

“And you,” Hiccup replied, as soon as he could get a breath in edgeways. He looked over to Pinebolt. “Good to see you both out and about.”

“We probably won’t stay the whole night,” she said. She shifted the baby in her arms, and Hiccup craned his neck to catch sight of the scrunched-up, pink face. “But I suspected people would want to get a look-see. We’ve named her Oaklout.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Oaklout,” said Hiccup. The baby stirred in her sleep, but did not wake, which boded well for getting along on Berk. He reached in to touch the faint wisps of hair on Oaklout’s head, then gave in and sat down next to Pinebolt instead. “This should be a good winter. No fighting with the dragons.” He tilted his head as if speaking to Oaklout. “You’ll never have to. You’re the first who can say that.”

“Not that he’s got grand plans or anything,” said Burplout, with a pointed look at his wife.

Pinebolt just laughed. “Oh, let him be. It’s a nice thought. Come on, sit down,” she added, with a nod to Elsa.

Elsa hesitated, then smiled cautiously and sat on the far side of Hiccup, hands folded carefully in her lap. Only then did Toothless finally catch up with them, shaking his head with a snort as he drew level with Burplout. He looked around, sniffed Burplout and the mug in his hand, and snuffled to himself.

“I think that counts as ‘happy Snoggletog’,” said Hiccup. He gestured the Night Fury over. “Come on, bud. Let Burplout be.”

Though Burplout was not looking quite convinced by the situation, he stood back and let Toothless pass, padding towards Hiccup. Toothless sat down, looked at Hiccup, then turned and sniffed at Oakbolt, bending down so that he was looking up at, rather than looming over, Pinebolt. She gave Hiccup a glance.

“It’s all right,” he said. If anyone thought for too long, they would probably realise that Toothless had not been around when any of the previous three children of the year had been very young. “He’s just being... Toothless.”

As they spoke, Toothless glanced between them, then lifted his head slightly so that he was level with the baby. He sniffed gently, then cocked his head and leant so that he was almost touching the blanket and sniffed again, nostrils flaring and flaps twitching. Pinebolt was sitting very still, and Burplout was still watching them closely, but neither was acting out and Hiccup clung to the thought like it was a lifeline, watching as they let a Night Fury close to them and their newborn daughter.

Toothless made one of his little murmuring sounds, not all that different from how he had sounded around the hatchlings, and huffed as he sat up again.

“I’m glad you think so,” said Pinebolt, voice a little tense but sounding to Hiccup more uncertain than anything else. She looked Toothless up and down as he sat in front of her, flaps still twitching,

Wartlout pushed through the crowd to join them, a bowl of thick stew cradled against his chest with one hand, the remains of a chicken leg in the other. He stopped beside his father at the sight of Hiccup or, more like, at the sight of Toothless.

“Hey, Wartlout,” said Hiccup quickly. “How’s your Snoggletog going?”

“Not bad,” Wartlout replied, eyes not moving from Toothless. He went to take another bite from the chicken leg, and only looked at it when his teeth met with bone. Wrinkling his nose, he looked around, probably for a table with a stray tray to put it on as they usually did. Then slowly his eyes travelled back to Toothless again. “Would he eat this if I gave it to him?”

“Yes,” Hiccup said. “They eat just about any meat that you give to them. And they like the bones, too. Hold it out to him, he’s gentle.”

Gentle enough, at least, but he wasn’t going to add that part aloud. Wartlout pulled a last scrap of meat off the bones with his teeth, then held the dangling collection of bones out to arm’s length. Licking his lips, Toothless glanced over to Hiccup, who gave him a nod. Toothless reached delicately out, opening his mouth to reveal the shine of his gums, and there was just enough time for Wartlout to frown before Toothless’s teeth slid into place and he plucked the bones from Wartlout’s hand, flicked them into the air, and gulped them down with an appreciative slurp.

“It makes clearing up easier,” said Hiccup to Pinebolt, with what he hoped was a winning tilt of his head.

“I can imagine.”

“All right,” said Burplout, “I’ll wade my way to the barrels. Who wants mead, who wants small ale?” He drained his own mug for emphasis.

“The water is probably going to go to the kids tonight,” said Hiccup to Elsa, with a slight shrug. “Too much work to keep bringing in the buckets. Probably better to stick with the small ale, though.” He did not particularly want to find out whether Elsa was the sort of loud, talkative drunk that Berk seemed to breed.

“I will take your advice,” Elsa demurred.

 

 

 

 

 

The evening grew more raucous as it went on, as was Snoggletog’s usual wont. On the far side of the haul, Hiccup could see Spitelout and Snotlout standing on the table leading a rousing chorus of ‘In the stores I saw’.

“There were _yards_ of yak, and _lashings_ of lamb,  
"And _dashings_ of duck so delightful,” they jointly bellowed.  
“There were _masses_ of mutton, and _pounds_ of pork,  
And furlongs of pheasant so frightful!”

They ended the verse with a cheer, Spitelout’s a little unsteady, and a wave of their flagons, before readying themselves and launching into a second one with new foodstuffs to sing about. It was a relatively simple form of song, and Berk had long practiced it. It did not stop the occasional scuffle from breaking out over whether or not peoples’ rhymes were good enough, though.

“So,” Wartlout said, pulling on Hiccup’s elbow to get his attention again. “When I’m older, do you think I could get a Night Fury?”

“Well, Night Furies aren’t exactly common,” said Hiccup quickly. Wartlout had wedged himself in between his mother and Hiccup, his dipping bread into his stew turning into wiping the bowl clean and going back for more. “But maybe you could meet a dragon and train it. The others did.”

Wartlout’s eyes went wide. “Like the Monstrous Nightmare?”

For the first split second, Hiccup thought that he meant Hookfang, but then he remembered the female Nightmare now settled in one of the barns. She was still very wild, but he supposed that any other new dragon which they bought in would be as well. It would probably be better to start with someone other than a nine year old.

“I think she might be needed to look after her hatchlings for a while,” he said instead, trying to be diplomatic while Pinebolt was looking over with concern. Meatlug’s two had been rather easier to control than five were going to be.

“Huh,” said Wartlout, wrinkling his nose. He looked out over Toothless, who was lying at their feet with his head on his paws. “Isn’t that one of your friends?”

Expecting to see Snotlout falling off the table again, or one of the twins hunting for another cup of mead, Hiccup glanced out. Anything he might have thought of saying went out of his head, though, when he caught sight of Astrid.

Her hair was loose. That was the thing that stuck with him first, because he did not think that he had ever seen Astrid with loose hair before. Only once that sunk in did he really see the dress that she was wearing, orange-red with a tightly-ruched front and a thick leather belt clasped in bronze at the front.

It occurred to Hiccup that he had completely forgotten how to speak.

He was still staring hopelessly when Astrid made her way over to them, grinning and nudging Toothless with her boot. He rolled over onto his back for her to tickle his belly with her foot.

“You, er,” said Hiccup, not even knowing what he was trying to say but quite sure that there had been something there.

Astrid gave him a look that said she would be punching him if he were actually within reach. “I am allowed to own a dress, you know.”

“Snoggletog clothes?” said Elsa, and Hiccup had never loved somebody more for the simple act of filling in a gap in the conversation.

“How did you guess?” said Astrid, offhand. She was still wearing her headband, holding most of her hair back from her face, and he could see her bracers beneath her long sleeves, but it was still such an unexpected sight that Hiccup could not string words together. Even at previous Snoggletogs, Astrid had worn pretty much her usual clothes. He should probably try to stop staring, he realised about the time that Astrid looked at him again. “Have you been sitting over here all evening instead of dancing?”

“I’m afraid my right foot is missing its dancing partner,” he replied, a little of the glibness coming back to him again. Raising his left foot as if that needed any emphasis was probably pushing it a bit too far, though.

Rolling her eyes, Astrid clicked her fingers and pointed to the side. Toothless obediently got to his feet and padded backwards out of the way so that she could advance on them, and Hiccup put his cane across his lap with a wave of defensiveness.

“And I’m keeping Elsa company,” he added.

Astrid looked over at Elsa. “What’s your excuse, then?”

“Oh, no,” Elsa head up one hand. “I don’t dance.”

“Bah, it’s Snoggletog,” said Astrid. She grabbed Elsa’s arm in one hand, Hiccup’s in the other, and hauled them both upright before either could manage a decent struggle. “Come on.”

“I _can’t_ dance,” said Elsa, a little more insistently, as she tried to pry Astrid’s hand off her arm.

“Neither can half of Berk,” replied Astrid, “but that doesn’t stop them from having a go. And as for _you_ , Gobber told me if I found you that I was to take you to him to learn the Pegleg Polka.”

Perhaps the lack of panpipes should have worried him, but Hiccup had been more concerned with tuning out the rather old fiddle and cow-horn recorders that were making up the backbone of the music. Apparently the long staves, with their iron rings that jangled in time with the thud of the butt upon the floor, had not yet been bought out for the evening.

“As tempting as that sounds,” Hiccup began dryly, but did not get much further as Astrid spun round, taking hold of his arm again so quickly that he did not have time to react, and started to pull him off in the direction of the music. “I would really rather _not_ , you know...”

“You’ll be fine,” said Astrid, with another roll of her eyes. “They’re teaching Hoark as well, with how long it’ll take his leg to heal.”

It really was quite astonishing how small the Great Hall could start to feel when you were being pulled across it at a determined sort of speed. Hiccup looked over his shoulder for Toothless, but couldn’t see him anywhere. “Have you been at the mead?” he said to Astrid.

She looked sternly at him, which did not answer the question but did make it quite clear that even with both of her hands full, she could probably still kick him in the back of the knee hard enough to make him question a significant number of his life choices.

“Question rescinded.”

“Good decision,” she said. As they reached Gobber, Hiccup made one last attempt to wrest free, but he had to give credit where credit was due. Astrid had a grip like iron. Either Gobber heard Hiccup’s silent pleas for escape or the sound of Hiccup’s foot was more distinctive than he had originally thought, as he turned and gave them all an appraising look. “Look what I found talking about dragons in the corner.”

“For the record,” he said, as Astrid gave him a shove in Gobber’s direction, “I hate you.”

She just snorted.

“There will be vengeance!” Hiccup warned. A hook wrapped around his upper arm and he was pulled inexorably in Gobber’s direction, but he shook his spare fist in Astrid’s direction. “And it will be mighty!”

“Whatever,” said Astrid. She looked over to Elsa, grinned, and slid her hold down to Elsa’s hand instead. “And you and I are going to learn a dance that involves two feet.”

Elsa looked more bewildered than anything else, and only because of that did Hiccup let them go rather than putting a stop to things before they got too silly. Being wrangled into the Pegleg Polka was probably something that he should have anticipated, but truth be told he had been enjoying sitting aside and talking with Wartlout, occasionally drawing Elsa into the conversation as he spoke about how he had met Toothless and what had happened with the dragons since. It was not as if dancing had ever been his strong point.

“Right,” Gobber said, spinning Hiccup around to face what he now realised was a circle of various individuals from the village who had lost a foot or leg somewhere along the way. “For a start, that’s going.”

He plucked the cane out of Hiccup’s hand and tossed it over his shoulder, despite Hiccup’s protests. There might have been a yelp somewhere in the distance, but it was really rather difficult to tell.

“Peglegs, yes, sticks, no,” continued Gobber. He looped one arm around Hiccup’s shoulders, slung one around Hoark’s, and Hiccup jumped as another arm slid around his waist.

“Hey!” he tried to pull away, then realised who it was and sighed. “Oh, hey, Mulch.”

 “Good of you to join us,” said Mulch. “For the dance, I mean. It’s not as if we’re wanting for members.”

“I gathered as much,” said Hiccup. Suspecting that he had something of an idea of where this was headed, he slung one arm around Mulch’s shoulders in turn. “And since I’m probably the only one present who hasn’t been on the mead, I’m hoping to get out of this as intact as possible. And let me guess,” he added, with a glance around the circle of twenty or so men and women, “Gobber leads?”

“Oh yes,” said Mulch. “Gobber leads.”

 

 

 

 

 

Viking dances did not tend to be complicated, especially ones that were designed even while heavily inebriated, but the pegleg polka had an extra element of chaos because it did not pay attention to left and right so much as present and missing feet. At first, Hiccup tried to follow Gobber, but realised his mistake when his boot ended up among everyone else’s prosthetics. Following Mulch, and trying not to look too desperately confused, seemed to work out somewhat better.

He was pretty sure that being hoisted onto people’s shoulders was _not_ a normal part, however.

“You – you are taking advantage!” he yelped. The main response was laughter. “Put me down!”

“Shall we, lads?” said Gobber, and the mischief was as audible in his voice as it was visible in the twinkle in his eye. “One, two – hup!”

Hiccup shouted in surprise as he was promptly _dropped_ , only to be caught again about six inches lower down amid a burst of laughter.

He was almost surprised that Stoick was not intervening in his son being thrown in the air, cane by now a lost cause. But this – the pegleg polka, like Stump Day – was something which Stoick was entirely aware he could not get too deeply involved. One little toe did not count, not for something like this.

“Bastards!” said Hiccup. It was met with more laughter, sounding like approval. He managed to squirm his good foot free and pointed it towards the ground, more from optimism than from real expectation of being able to get free that easily. “Are you really going to go up against,” he wriggled again, and dropped a few inches, but was still at everyone’s head height, “this much,” he got an arm briefly free, “raw vikingness?!”

The free foot was grabbed and hoisted back up in the air again, so sharply that Hiccup thought for a moment he was going to end up entirely upside-down. He aimed a glare under his armpit, and should not have been surprised to find Gobber grinning back at him.

“Oh, aye,” said Gobber. “Nine parts raw vikingness, one part steel to replace the bit that got cooked.”

“Oh, you’re funny,” Hiccup tried to point, which was not too easy when someone had hold of his forearm. “You’re a funny one. How would you like it if I made jokes about how you lost your hand, huh?”

“Come up with one that I haven’t made, and I’ll muck out your pens for a week,” said Gobber, still grinning.

When Hiccup had first been to Arendelle, aged six, he had been confused as to why nobody had wooden legs or hooks and had asked his father about it, rather loudly. Luckily nobody around them had spoken Northur; Stoick had gently explained that fewer people in Arendelle had missing hands or feet, and they didn’t really talk about it there either. At least when it came to his leg, he knew that Gobber’s, or anyone else’s, teasing came from a place of affection. It was a step up from last year.

Hiccup wagged a finger, but had to admit defeat for the moment. “I’ll get back to you,” he said.

There was a rumble from somewhere around him; this was a lot more disorientating than flying. Hiccup craned his head around, and finally caught sight of Toothless nudging between people, then stretching his head up to peer around. “Over here, bud!” he called.

As if by unspoken agreement, he was turned back towards the floor and allowed to stand by himself again as Toothless barged his way into the circle. It was a lot easier to barge when you’re a dragon.

“Bah, that’s cheating,” said Gobber, as Hiccup rubbed Toothless’s head. “You’re still owed a proper induction. Come Stump Day.”

“Oh, come on Gobber,” said Mulch, “don’t give the lad warning.”

“If I can’t be given warning, can I at least be given a drink? Turns out that trying to negotiate my freedom makes for a dry throat.”

“Go on, then,” said Gobber, with a wave away. “You’ll miss the hopalong hoopla, though.”

“I will try to bear that burden.”

He slipped away, Toothless beside him, but part of him still felt buoyant enough to be up in the air. Missing foot or not, that would never have been him before. And even after everything that had happened this year, even everything that had happened in just the last moon, it was good to see people celebrating, and amazing to see them doing so with dragons in the same room. They were starting to get out of the valley, he told himself. Even if it was hard climbing at times, they were starting to get out.

As the music lurched on, he retrieved a drink, downed it against his rough throat, and with a second in hand set to looking about for Astrid and where she might have dragged Elsa to. Elsa had not been looking keen on the idea of dancing, but he could not truthfully say that she had looked worried or frightened, and he did trust Astrid to back off if she was pushing Elsa _too_ far.

Largely.

Well, dancing couldn’t be too traumatising, he was sure.

It was actually the blue-green fabric of the dress that gave her away, the colour unusual enough to catch his eye. To his delight, she was smiling, even laughing, as Astrid spun her around and she twirled off-beat from the music that was not particularly on-beat itself. As she spun, she caught sight of Hiccup, and hid her laughter behind her hand as he sped up in her direction, dodging the twins even more out-of-time movements.

“Not bad,” he said. “Probably better than me at the pegleg polka. You haven’t seen my cane, have you?”

“Passed overhead a while back, I think,” said Astrid. She still looked wholly unapologetic with her part in the whole fiasco, though she was pink-cheeked with dancing and the increasing heat in the room. Toothless walked over and headbutted her, nuzzling into her side. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Well, your confidence in me is flattering, but I do still hope to retrieve it before the night is out.” He took a sip of the second drink which he had managed to pick up, and only then realised that it was mead rather than ale. Well, it was too much effort to replace it now. Instead, he took another sip, and turned to Elsa. “So, how’s the dancing going?”

Elsa and Astrid exchanged a look. “Getting there,” said Astrid finally, words careful, and Elsa giggled again. “Already significantly better than the twins, though.”

There was a yell from behind them, and Hiccup looked round in time to see Ruffnut try to lift Tuffnut into the air, only for both of them to go crashing to the ground.

“I can agree with that without having even seen you,” said Hiccup.

 

 

 

 

 

“So I enter the cove, rain pouring down,” said Hiccup. He wasn’t entirely sure how he had ended up sitting on the table with over a dozen children listening to him, and Toothless curled up mostly underneath the same table eating any food or bones that he was given, “expecting that only Elsa will be waiting for me. When – there!”

He gestured with the flat of his hand, to gasps from his audience.

“A shadow in the rain. A sleek, dark figure,” he traced the air, like he was tracing the line of Toothless’s back, and for a moment inside his own mind marvelled at how clear the memory was. “Wings half spread.”

The words flowed from him so easily, if a little bit sanitised from the actual fear-stained day that he had entered the cove to find Elsa facing a hurt and frightened Night Fury. It was getting late for the children to be awake, and he could see some of them nodding off on the shoulders of their friends or siblings, but most of them were watching and there were more than a few adults within earshot who were glancing around from time to time as well.

“Bud. Bud, bud,” he peered under the table and made a circling gesture with one finger. “Come on. Show them your tail. Yes, I know you’ve got your tail on.” Toothless was looking at him dubiously, which was not much appreciated when he was trying to point out to the children the effort that he had put into making the tail. “I just want to point out the weighting on the tailpins to compensate for–”

There was an enormous belch from a few tables away, and more than a few of the children who had been watching Hiccup starting laughing. More than a couple of the adults did as well. Hiccup craned his neck, though he was starting to have his suspicions, when a deeper and longer belch replied to the first.

“Of course,” he said, but couldn’t help smiling. This had been a fixture of Snoggletogs past, if obviously not for the last few. Unable to see what was going on, he gave up, set his drink aside, and stood up on the table to peer over instead. He was just in time to see Burplout put down his own mug, pat his chest in preparation, and let rip with another eructation.

Apparently, this one was long enough to please the gathering audience, who responded with laughter and even a smattering of applause.

“What is going on?” said Elsa cautiously, from around hip height.

“Belching contest,” Hiccup replied. He folded his arms and watched Gobber wag a finger at Burplout, saying something not quite audible, before plucking out his false tooth, accepting a refill of the mug attached to his left wrist, and drinking it all in one go. He held a finger up, glancing around at people and playing up the momentary wait, before proceeding to open his mouth for a singularly eye-watering belch that seemed to fill the hall and block out the music. It was impossible not to start laughing as even more applause broke out.

Elsa’s hand was a gentle pressure against his ankle. “I meant,” she said, as he looked down, “why are you on the table.”

He shrugged. “Couldn’t see.” Climbing things had been a habit since he was young, and honestly Hiccup would say that it had been more to his advantage than his disadvantage over the years. But it probably wasn’t the best of ideas on the occasionally slightly wobbly tables of the Great Hall, especially since Toothless might have been drooling on this one earlier in the evening. He managed to sit back down again with a minimum of gracelessness, and did not even knock over his mug. “But still: belching contest.”

Another ripping belch sounded, this one starting deep and rising in tone. Burplout, showing off.

“Get a burp and a belch in the same place, what do you expect?” he said, with a faintly whimsical shrug. “At least people aren’t taking bets this year.”

At least, he assumed that they weren’t. Although he did hope that Wartlout wasn’t taking too many notes.

 

 

 

 

The day after Snoggletog was always a rather more muted affair, not least because of the number of headaches that were being nursed around the village. Having stayed up until sunrise with the rest of the so-called adults, Hiccup limped downstairs at close to the middle of the day, and even that did not mean much sleep at this time of year. He sunk gingerly into a chair by the fire and rubbed his eyes, but smiled at the sight of Toothless padding down the stairs after him, and laughed at the sight of the saddle held hopefully in Toothless’s mouth.

“All right, bud, all right,” he said. Even sitting upright put an ache into muscles which he did not even know he had. “Maybe no tricks today, though.”

He failed to suppress a huge yawn as he waved Toothless closer, and was just considering how much effort it would be to stand up again when the door to the house was shouldered open and his father waded back in, a blast of cold air and a flurry of snow in his wake. Hiccup shielded his eyes against the glare of the snowstorm, shifted his weight, and winced as he discovered new bruises on his thighs.

With twin thuds, Stoick put down the two buckets that he had been carrying and regarded Hiccup sternly. “Not you too,” he said.

Gobber had also been awake until dawn, but while Hiccup’s walk home had been made more difficult by the cane which he had been unable to retrieve, Gobber’s difficulties had been for a different reason. Stoick had made a number of less-than-veiled threats about wheelbarrows. “I’m not hungover, Dad,” said Hiccup. “Just experiencing some post-polka regret.”

He had witnessed the pegleg polka before, but only from a safe distance. It had not previously been impressed on him quite how much kicking was involved, or how much of that kicking tended to end up connecting with the shins of the other people in the circle. Somewhere along the line, he had started taking as many of the kicks as possible on his left foot, but that had not helped when he had fallen over.

On any of the occasions.

“You aren’t the first,” said Stoick, sounding more than a little relieved. Although there had been mead passed around after the polka, Hiccup had managed to duck under the majority of the mugs before just plain escaping. Catching himself, he stepped away from the doorway to reveal Elsa, waiting patiently with snow in her hair and another bucket of water in each hand. “Oh, sorry, Elsa.”

“It is no problem,” she said softly. She stepped aside to let Stoick wrest the door closed against the wind, and looked round to Hiccup. “Sorry, what does it mean, ‘hungover’?”

Hiccup jerked a thumb in the direction of the back bedroom. If Gobber had finished sobering up already, it would be impressive but not unheard of. “I’ll point it out when we see it. Sorry bud,” he added to Toothless, “but looking at that weather we aren’t going flying.”

Flicking his plates, Toothless chirped, and Hiccup could not help laughing again.

“No, really. Too much snow for me, too much wind for you.”

“Would you like something to eat, or are you still full of yak from yesterday?” said Stoick. He picked up the buckets again and moved them over to near the fire.

“Whole yards of it,” said Hiccup, memories of the Jorgensons’ singing rising up like a Darkbreather in his mind. He shook himself back to the moment. “But I’m good, thanks. Might go and see how the hatchlings are doing.”

“Which set?” said Elsa, putting the second set of buckets alongside the first. When Hiccup looked round in surprise, he saw that she was smiling, and there was colour in her cheeks even if the bags under her eyes looked darker than usual.  “The Nadders,” she counted off on her fingers, “the Nightmares, or Meatlug’s?”

The way that she was able to list them was like a warmth in Hiccup’s bones, and he was reminded again of the Night Fury tooled on the reverse of his new vest. “We’re going to need a lot more names in the near future, aren’t we?” he said. There were probably going to be a lot of children in the village vying for that opportunity, to judge by how Piglegs and Froglegs had been, and at least it would take the weight off Hiccup’s imagination. “And, well,” he glanced over at Toothless. “We can just start with one brood and work our way through, huh, bud?” Toothless yelped, slightly muted but not wholly so, and there was muffled swearing from the back bedroom. “Probably before Gobber gets out of bed...”

He levered himself out of the chair, and grimaced as he discovered another bruise or two. Stretching his arms and arching his back, he felt various cricks and pops which he was sure hadn’t been there a year ago, but whether they could be put down to adulthood, dragon-riding, or just the foolish things he had found to do was anyone’s guess.

Toothless put his saddle down, and stretched his forelegs out in front of him as he yawned, arching his rump up into the air. Straightening up, he shook his head, flaps rustling against the side of his head with an almost purring sound before perking up his flaps completely and looking at Hiccup.

“All right,” Hiccup grinned. “One quick flight. First of the year, huh? Might as well make the most of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is [a photomanip](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7767808) to go with this; be warned, I'm no photoshop expert, but I'm moderately happy with the result.
> 
> And with this chapter, we come to the end of the Viking year, and to the end of the Snoggletog Arc! Next chapter will bring in a new arc.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, and welcome to _The Dagur Arc_. Imaginative, I know. But yes, everyone's favourite Berserker is coming to Berk, and next week he will be joining us.
> 
> I want to put a warning on this arc (chapters 25 to 34) for **consent issues**. Although it is not acknowledged by the characters, due to the setting, Dagur's behaviour towards Hiccup is rife with consent issues. Think of Dagur's behaviour in _The Night and the Fury_ , where he's touchy-feely and all over Hiccup, and cross it with a bit of Gaston at the beginning of the 1991 Beauty and the Beast. The only physical contact is Dagur touching Hiccup's wrist or thighs, but he's very pushy and seems under the impression that Hiccup is 'playing hard to get' throughout. So that warning basically goes flat across Dagur's entire appearance here.

Winter always got its teeth in deeper after Snoggletog, no matter the optimism which played a role in the celebration itself. Hiccup’s cane turned up after a couple of days, along with the various other items which had gone missing in the party, and though he did not see Astrid’s dress again he was fairly convinced that it had not, in fact, been a hallucination.

When the winds were in their favour, they flew, as achingly cold as it was even on the ground. When the winds became too strong – and it was only the wind, and not the snow, that ever stopped them – it was usually too bad to even venture outside, and Hiccup was forced to content himself with redesigning and fixing Toothless’s saddle, teaching the Night Fury to smile, and finally coming downstairs in the middle of a howling storm to find that his father had moved all of the furniture to the edges of the room to open up a large area in the centre.

“What’s going on?” said Hiccup warily, from the bottom of the stairs.

“Time to get you training again,” said Stoick. He straightened up from moving the last chair, dusted off his hands, and fixed Hiccup with a smile which rather suggested that he’d been inside for too long. “Need to get your balance back again.”

“I’m good, thanks,” Hiccup said.

He tried to turn back upstairs again, and might have made it had Toothless not been directly in the way. As it was, he was caught by the belt and held tugged down the last few stairs, trying desperately to hold on to either his balance or his dignity. Finally he turned to face his father and sighed.

“Really?”

“Come on, now,” said Stoick. “I know that you never really, well, thought that fighting was your strength–”

Hiccup made a derisive sound.

“But that doesn’t mean that you can’t train all the same,” finished Stoick.

He knew that tone of voice. It meant that there was going to be no arguing, that even if every man had a right to disagreement with his chief it was quite another thing for a son to disobey his father. “Stay there, bud,” said Hiccup, with a wave to Toothless to stay on the stairs. He looked around to see Elsa standing in the doorway of her room, looking faintly puzzled. “You might not want to watch this. There could be carnage.” He waved his cane in his father’s direction. “And this isn’t going to get in the way a bit?”

“You’ve been wandering around more and more without it lately,” Gobber pointed out traitorously. Hiccup did his best to glare, but like many such attempts it fell rather short of its intended effect. “Besides, it’s not like we’re making you spar with Astrid or anything.”

He supposed that was something for which he should be grateful. Likewise the lack of Snotlout which meant that he might be able to retain at least some credibility as a dragon-rider after this. “Well, I will be thankful for small mercies. All right, all right, am I getting a weapon or are we skipping straight to the part where I’ve been disarmed?”

With a sigh, Stoick picked up a seax from the table and spun it so that Hiccup could draw it from its sheath. Most of Berk looked derisively at such a short blade, at least past the age of nine or ten, and Hiccup had always been grateful that his father had looked pragmatically the matter. Better a seax than no weapon at all in Hiccup’s hand, he seemed to have decided.

Of course, Stoick drawing an equal weapon looked absurd, more like he was about to sit down to dinner than to fight, and it was all that Hiccup could do to not turn and walk away from the ridiculousness of it. Instead, though, he readied the sword in his left hand, tossed his cane to Gobber more out of a sense of pettiness than any good reason, and was a little disgruntled when Gobber caught it with his good hand and set it down on the table.

“You’re going to make this a daily thing again, aren’t you?” said Hiccup. Stoick had tried, several years ago, to ‘put that wiry build of yours to good use’. It could have been the definition of optimism.

Stoick smiled, but there was something a little warmer than before about it. “You’re a man, Hiccup. You’ve got as much right to bear arms as any of us. More, perhaps, after everything.”

“Doesn’t mean I should be trusted with a sword,” Hiccup muttered, but it was difficult to put any bite behind it.

Rather than credit that with an answer, apparently, Stoick cut in with the sword. Hiccup deflected it easily enough, knew immediately that his father was just testing to see how much he remembered, and shifted his grip on the hilt of the sword as it moved in his hand in ways which he had half-forgotten.

The second and third strikes grew harder, more challenging, and the fourth was enough to jar his elbow and make him grunt with the impact. Wishing he had time to shake the discomfort out of his arm, he ducked straight under his father’s next horizontal sweep, and as Stoick brought round the reverse Hiccup rolled away, taking the impact on his shoulder and staggering upright as he remembered belatedly that he only had one ankle nowadays. He bought his seax up, ready to defend, only to see both his father and Gobber looking at him in astonishment.

“What?” he said.

“Where did that come from?” said Stoick, with a wave that almost certainly indicated the roll.

“It’s what I would’ve... done on... Toothless,” Hiccup said, voice slowly fading as he went through the words and his father’s expression did not seem to shift. He winced slightly, not sure what he could possibly expect in response for that, and certainly not thinking that it would be for Stoick to look over to Toothless, nod almost with respect, before turning back to Hiccup with his expression softening.

“It was good,” he said gently. Hiccup still wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“Apparently it took gaining a dragon and losing a foot to figure out how the rest of your body works,” said Gobber wryly. “Imagine that.”

He was leaning against the table, picking his teeth with his hook and not looking in the least bit ashamed as Hiccup looked at him in exasperation. “Thank you for that observation,” replied Hiccup instead.

“But you have got yourself into something of a corner,” said Stoick, gesturing with his seax to the chair that now stood behind Hiccup, the wall at his side. “How are you planning to get out of it?”

“Finding the smallest gap possible,” Hiccup said. He did not plan on apologising for it either, not even as it was Stoick’s turn to frown. “So that I can’t be followed through it.” He thought at first that his father was going to tell him off for the return of the weight comments, but instead Stoick slashed with the seax so fast that Hiccup barely managed to get his sword in the way. “Hey!”

“I blunted them down,” said Gobber, with an airy wave.

A couple of pounds of iron was still not something with which Hiccup particularly wanted to acquaint himself, but he did not really have time to retort as he parried again, a third time, and finally saw an opening to go in for a stab of his own.

He lashed out for his father’s upper thigh, but Stoick’s blade knocked his away and came round dangerously close to head-height. One of relatively few advantages of being short was that ducking came easier, and Hiccup did it again, and stabbed upwards towards his father’s abdomen.

Despite himself, he could feel it coming back, the moves that Stoick had laboured over trying to teach him for so long. He knew the moves, the theory, but he could feel the burn in his shoulders once again from wielding the sword and, worse, knew that he had so much less reach than his father than it verged on the ridiculous. Axes had been even worse. It had always been turning the theory into the practice that had been difficult, combined with the awkwardness of trying to use his left hand. He should have been better with shields, at least in theory, but most of the time they were simply too heavy for him.

He took another step to his left, moved his weight too fast, and his feet went out from under him. With a yelp, Hiccup hit the ground backside first and almost bounced, embarrassingly, in place. Gobber was chuckling somewhere in the background, and Stoick looked almost fondly down before swapping the seax to his left hand and extending his right to help Hiccup up.

“I guess that means training is over,” said Hiccup, carefully not letting his tone sound too optimistic.

“For today,” said Stoick reasonably.

With a groan, Hiccup released his father’s hand and flopped back onto the floor again. There was a chirp to his right, and he laughed as Toothless padded over, looked him over critically, then leaned in with the clear intent of licking his face. Hiccup rolled quickly aside and sat up to give the dragon a pointed look. “Really?” As a thought occurred, however, he looked up at his father. “If the fighting involved dragons, I think I’d have a better chance.”

“I don’t see single combat with dragons catching on,” said Stoick.

Frankly, Hiccup thought that showed a dramatic lack of imagination, but he finally accepted the hand again and was pulled to his feet. He picked up the sheath for his seax and put it away himself, unable to avoid noticing the notched edges and the bluntness. The years in the smithy made him want to get it back to fighting condition, but he knew that they needed training weapons as well as good ones.

For all his joking, though, he would not want dragons used as weapons like that. The day would probably come when he had to argue with Spitelout over that, but hopefully it would be a way off yet.

“And let me guess,” he said, surveying the room. “Losing party has to disassemble the fighting ring, right?”

Stoick clapped him on the shoulder. “Excellent suggestion. Good luck with it.”

Cursing both his sore backside and his over-ready fatalism, Hiccup set to work. This storm could not end soon enough.

 

 

 

 

 

Stoick did indeed seem worringly set on turning training into a daily occurrence, despite Hiccup’s increasing mutters of rebellion and growing array of bruises. Blunted or not, anything that did make contact was liable to leave a mark, and even though Stoick gamely left off his scalemail it was not as if Hiccup was really going to get any resounding hits in. By the time that the storm broke a few days later, leaving snowdrifts taller than Stoick, Hiccup was not sure whether he or Toothless wanted more to escape to the air and fly once again.

The bitter cold of the air was not exactly anything new to Berk. All that Hiccup had to do was wrap himself up a bit warmer, make sure that his clothes were tight against the wind, and enjoy the feeling of flying.

On the clearer days, men hunted, and some of the braver – or perhaps more foolish, Hiccup supposed; this was Berk, after all – took to the boats to fish when the seas were calm enough to bear them. With Stoick ordering them not to take risks, they did not lose a single boat, although more than once Hiccup heard a commotion down at the wharves as they tried to get boats docked and unloaded before another snowstorm came in.

Paths were dug to the Great Hall for the _midwinterblót_ , nobody intending to miss out on another opportunity to eat, drink and carouse while there was so little else to do in the winter. Even sheltered slopes were under snow too deep to think about planting, and there was no grazing left for any of the animals. At least the icehouses around the village meant that there were some greens left to go with the meat and eggs, otherwise the food would probably have been all but unbearably repetitive.

At least the day that Hiccup had seen everyone blindfolded to fly around the sea stacks had been entertaining. It had been astonishing how many crashes there had been, nobody quite able to trust their dragon to do the seeing for them. He did at least offer to straighten out Snotlout’s helmet, though, to Gobber’s deep sigh.

“I know,” said Hiccup. “But at least we know that Hookfang’s wing has fully healed up.”

Snow gave way to frosts which crusted the ground and threatened to freeze the more sheltered areas of the shallows along the beach. At least the dragons probably made a few more friends, however, after a morning spent clearing away the snow and ice around the defences, and several mornings in which Meatlug’s fire was the one to clear the well.

Somewhere along the line, Hiccup noticed that people were greeting Toothless as well as him. Usually it was just an extra nod or a ‘dragon’, only very rarely his name, but whatever had started the change it seemed to spread faster than Hiccup expected. Every time, he struggled to stop himself from giving Toothless a grin, not wanting to draw peoples’ attention if they were not aware they were doing it.

Mildew, skulking away on his farm, seemed to get less attention whenever he actually came down to the village to start up one of his arguments. One day, Hiccup was wading through knee-high snow on the short walk back from the Ingermans’ house to his own when he heard Mildew shouting about wild beasts in the centre of town and, frowning, turned in that direction.

Astrid grabbed him by the arm so quickly that Hiccup did not see it coming, and almost fell into the snow before she dragged him back over. “Don’t bother,” she said.

“I can’t let him go spreading around nonsense like that!” said Hiccup. He could hear Mildew talking about how a dragon had killed his second wife, which was true only so far as to say that she had slipped in dragon blood and broken her neck in the fall.

To his surprise, Astrid smiled, albeit in a way that made Hiccup very glad that he wasn’t a prey animal right about now. “I’m not sure it’s count as spreading if he’s only got three people listening to him.”

Hiccup stopped short. “Three?”

“And one of them was Nobber, who to be honest might have just been in the same area picking his nose,” said Astrid. She folded her arms across her chest, tossed her hair out of her face, and cocked her hip as if to settle her point. “You’ll just get more people interested if you do start an argument with him.”

It still rankled, the thought of leaving him to say what he wanted without being interrupted. Astrid grabbed Hiccup’s arm again, turned him around, and tugged him back in the vague direction of his house.

“Come on,” she said. “He’s losing people. Come spring, if your father gives people a chance to leave again, they probably won’t want to.”

Hiccup allowed himself to be led away, even if he was still frowning. Let Mildew dig himself into a whole load of trouble, instead.

 

 

 

 

 

The storm season broke early, for Berk, less than two moons from Snoggletog and well before the equinox. The seas remained unpredictable, but the skies were clearer, and as often as he could Hiccup gathered the others together to go flying as a group. For now, just shy of the calving season, he still had the twins, but Fishlegs had to help his mother prepare the first seeds for early sowing, and Gothi had Runa restocking her herb supply, with Astrid regularly helping her mother make the runs deeper into the Wildlands. A day on a dragon was safer than half a moon on the ground, she said with a shrug, and Hiccup was more than ready to agree.

He finally managed to get them all together to strike out north-east, while the seas were quiet and there should not be boats to see them. Astrid was still getting better at balancing while crouching on Stormfly’s back, though even she admitted that she could only fly in a straight line in such a fashion. When Snotlout tried to copy it, Hiccup had to dive down and catch him before he hit the sea.

“Next time,” he shouted down, leaning over Toothless’s side. “Try over snow. A short distance over it!”

Snotlout shouted something back that was caught by the wind, accompanied by a rude gesture which rapidly vanished when Toothless shifted his paws and Snotlout clung on instead. Sighing, Hiccup carefully drew right above Hookfang, and lowered Snotlout to within what must have been inches before Toothless actually had to jostle in the air to shake him back into his saddle again.

They were improving, he told himself again. Everyone was. Even if the main reason the twins hadn’t tried to swap seats in mid-air yet was that they had spent the morning bickering about which head was better.

“Let’s try this again,” Hiccup shouted at everyone. “Just fly _together_!”

“Hiccup,” said Ruffnut, and Hiccup braced himself for what seemed to be another fast-approaching source of frustration. “Are there supposed to be boats out here?”

“No,” he said, hoping that it would be the last time but suspecting that was not going to be the case. “There will be no boats at this time of year. We are just out flying.”

“Then what’s that?” said Tuffnut, pointing off to the east.

Sighing, Hiccup looked all the same, expecting to see a block of ice, a shadow, or just maybe a water-dwelling dragon breaking the surface to breathe. He did not expect in the slightest to see one boat there, let alone several, three of them strung out across the surface of the sea and battling through the choppy waves. Their sails were tightly trimmed, boats close-hauled to travel upwind, but Hiccup could still see the unmistakable jagged edges of the Skrill, the dragon used as a symbol by the Berserker tribe.

“Oh, Thor,” Hiccup got as far as saying, before the wind turned just enough for him to hear one bellow cutting through the air.

_“Fire!”_

“Get down!” he called over his shoulder to the others, flattening himself to Toothless’s back. Toothless roared and fired back, fire billowing through the air and engulfing the arrows which Hiccup could see as specks moving through the air.

He pulled Toothless up into the air without a thought, plunging upwards into clouds which seemed to go on forever, until he was so high that the air tasted thin and his hands shook. Though that could have been the arrows. It seemed like an eternity, though it was probably only seconds, before Astrid broke through the clouds beside him, holding tight to Stormfly’s saddle and with her hair sticking to her face with the water in the air.

“What in Frigg’s name just happened?” she said.

“The Berserkers saw dragons,” said Hiccup; he supposed that nothing more than that was really needed. Snotlout and Hookfang were the next ones to break out beside them, then Fishlegs pressing himself as flat as possible to Meatlug’s back with his helmet crooked and fear on his face. “They don’t know they don’t have to fire.”

“What are they even _doing_ out here?”

That was a rather better question, at least right now. It should have been almost half a moon until the Berserkers took to the seas again as the season began to open up for short voyages, even if the annual treaty-signing was one of the first trips which they always made. Hiccup did not have much time to think of an answer, however, while he scanned the clouds below them for Ruffnut and Tuffnut. “Has anyone seen the twins?”

The others looked as blank as he did, and Hiccup felt his heart in his throat. He gestured for the others to stay where they were.

“Keep out of sight. I’m going to look for them.”

He took a deep breath, ready to plunge back into the sea of cloud, but before he could do so Tuffnut reared out of the clouds, hands raised like claws and teeth bared, growling into the air. “Arrgh!” he shouted.

If Hiccup had been Astrid, he probably would have punched Tuffnut just at that moment, but he simply tightened his hands on Toothless’s saddle. “Tuffnut, cut it out. Ruffnut, come on up out of the cloud.”

“You don’t know I’m here,” said the cloud.

“Ruffnut!”

With a sigh, Ruffnut emerged from the cloud as well, though she sat about half-way out with her lower half shrouded. She scowled, clearly not having taken in any of the implications of a Berserker ship sailing towards Berk and finding dragons along the way.

“We need to head home,” said Hiccup firmly. Cutting a flight short was a small price to pay for getting this particular piece of news back to his father. The winds would not hold them back in the way that it would the ship, but if Osvald the Agreeable was making for Berk this early in the year then there had to be a good reason behind it. “Come on.”

 

 

 

 

 

It took a lap of Berk before he saw his father, just leaving the smithy and visible against the snow. He drew ahead of the others and dropped down, dismounting fluidly and narrowing missing crashing into Spitelout as he did so.

“Sorry!” he said automatically. Spitelout just grunted something vague and kept on moving. Good to know that some things didn’t change.

“Hiccup?”

And there, of course, was the real reason for his landing. “Dad,” he said, “I need to talk to you. We’ve just seen Berserker boats, out to the north-east. Perhaps...” he calculated in his head as best he could. “Twenty knots out, heading in our direction but close to the wind.”

“Berserkers?” Stoick sounded almost affronted, at the idea. “Why would they be at sea so early in the season?”

“Well, you’d need to be Berserk to go sailing right now,” said Hiccup, and it probably said a lot about how surprised Stoick was that there was no reprimand for it. “Honestly, I have no idea, but they’re going to be here well before the usual treaty signing.”

Stoick groaned, reaching up to rub his forehead. “If the wind doesn’t change, they’ll be here some time tonight. But it could be earlier. I need to spread the word, make sure that we have lodgings for them and can get a feast prepared. Hiccup, I need you to make sure that all of the dragons are hidden for the duration of their stay.”

“What?” His hand tightened on the ring on Toothless’s saddle, and he shifted slightly closer to the dragon. “From Osvald the Agreeable? The Berserkers have been our allies for... how long is it now?”

“Nearly fifty years,” said Stoick, knowing full well that Hiccup could not let a question lie once he had asked it. “And yes, Osvald has done plenty to see that the Berserkers have peace treaties with most of the archipelago, but I’m not sure that would extend to dragons.”

Osvald was in his seventies now, though still an exceptional fighter from what Hiccup had heard, and some of those treaties had been based on threats of single combat against the chiefs of the other tribes. Berk was one of few islands for whom the treaty was mutual, though the cynic in Hiccup wondered whether that was partially because Berk did not have all that much to give in danegeld, Instead, Stoick and Osvald usually exchanged smaller gifts and ensured that the treaty was signed once again.

“If there’s any other chief that I can see accepting dragons, it would be Osvald,” said Hiccup. “It’s great what we have here, Dad, the peace, but all the other islands are still attacking dragons on sight! They shot at us when they saw us!”

“They what?” Stoick scowled, immediately grabbing Hiccup’s shoulders and pulling him closer, and Hiccup laughed nervously as he realised his mistake in letting that particular detail slip. “Are you all right?”

“We’re fine! They missed,” he said with a wave of his hand. He was definitely not going to mention that the miss might have had a lot to do with the fact that Toothless had burnt the arrows before they could have reached them. “Obviously not as good a shot as they think they are.”

Stoick squeezed his shoulders and looked at him levelly. “All the same, Hiccup, I think that proves my point. Keep the dragons out of sight, and _if_ ,” he said the word heavily enough to stop anything that Hiccup might have said, “things go well, we might be able to talk to Osvald about what we’ve learned about the dragons, and the peace. Does that sound fair?”

It sounded like a start, perhaps, and Hiccup nodded. With a final pat, his father released him, and he slipped back into Toothless’s saddle without having to be asked again. “I’ll get the others and go to the cove. Where Elsa was,” he added, as he saw the question forming in Stoick’s eyes. “It should be big enough for them. I’ll take them to get some food at night, when we shouldn’t be visible.” It still rankled a little, having to hide them at all, but it occurred that they did not know which of his children Osvald was planning on bringing this time. Hiccup paused and looked at his father hopefully. “Does this mean that I don’t have to babysit Dagur this time?”

“We’ll see if we can find someone to keep an eye on him,” said Stoick.

Well, at least one thing looked to be going right today.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally drafted in June 2015 - and as a reward for finishing this chapter, I watched the episodes _Have Dragonm Will Travel_ parts one and two. I then spent about six weeks whimpering about how jossed I had been, but I was too deep into the plot by then. So this is, I guess, the point at which it goes completely AU from the TV series, with the character of Ashblade.

Hiccup made sure to take the others to the cove before he told them that they would have to leave the dragons there for a few days. It turned out that he had guessed correctly what would happen when he did. He grabbed Stormfly’s bridle before Astrid could manage to climb back into the saddle again, trying to act as if he did not agree with her anger.

“Really?” she said. “We’re hiding from Osvald the Agreeable?”

“Try to think of it as... exercising discretion,” suggested Hiccup, with a flourish of his other hand. Astrid looked unimpressed. “Look, my father is probably going to want me around for this treaty, if things go well I’ll try to steer the conversation in the direction of the dragons.”

“Do we know which of his children he’s bringing with him?” said Fishlegs, a note of fear getting into his voice.

That, of course, was the other problem. Hiccup grimaced. “No. If Ashblade’s back from her year viking? I think we’ve got a good chance of a calm year. If not...”

“I hope that Dagur’s coming,” said Snotlout. He was still on Hookfang’s neck, leaning on his horns with chin in hand. “He’s awesome.”

“He’s a prick,” said Astrid flatly. “Last time he was here he wanted a sheep killed because he didn’t like how it looked at him.”

“So?” said Snotlout. “A Viking has to think about respect.”

“And last year,” Hiccup added, “He tried to play Bhrian Bloodaxe with me.”

“What, knock an apple off your head with an axe? Whatever.” Snotlout waved a hand dismissively. “We’ve all done that.”

“Not with an _actual_ axe.” Hiccup had just about made it off Berserker Island – whatever else their gifts, Berserkers were not over-burdened with creativity – with his skull intact, and had no desire to repeat the experience this year. He sighed and turned away before Snotlout managed to turn this into a full-blown argument, to see that the twins were getting Barf and Belch to stick their heads into the caves. Tuffnut’s chuckle echoed out, enough to make Hiccup rather uncomfortable. “Come on, guys. We need to leave them here.”

“But Hiccup, the hatchlings...” Fishlegs was holding Skyfire and Silversnap to his chest. Hiccup had coaxed the Gronckle and Nadder hatchlings from the Ingermans’ and Hoffersons’ houses respectively, and they had made quite the parade on their way to the cove with the hatchlings dotting and weaving around them and the adult dragons slowing right down to accommodate them.

“Will need to stay here as well,” said Hiccup firmly. “I’m going back to get the new Nightmare and her clutch. Astrid, you know the way back to the village, I’ll need you to lead the others there.”

“And leave you to walk back on your own? I don’t think so.” Astrid replied.

There was still snow on the ground, the days not yet warm enough for it to really start melting, but Hiccup would like to think that he was no longer a complete invalid who could not be trusted to walk in a straight line without anyone to prop him up. For that matter, falling over away from people would at least be less embarrassing than falling over in front of them. “Look, I’ve travelled this way plenty of times,” he began, leaving out the fact that said travelling had been the previous summer and on two feet.

“I’ll wait,” said Fishlegs. Hiccup promptly lost the latter half of his sentence to look over in astonishment. “I’ll walk back with Hiccup.”

A look of horror crossed Astrid’s face as it dawned that she would be walking back Snotlout and the twins. Before he could feel bad about it, Hiccup fixed her with a bright smile and slipped out of grabbing range, back towards Toothless.  “Sounds like a plan. See you again soon, Fishlegs!”

Astrid may have sworn in his direction, but he wasn’t intending on sticking around to hear it.

 

 

 

 

 

Getting the female Nightmare out of the barn to which she had taken so well tended to be rather more difficult. This time was no different, and it took two fish and some dragon nip before Hiccup could get her out and up into the air, hatchlings prancing along and fluttering after her. The Nightmares were also just about old enough to fly by themselves, and tried to nip at Toothless’s tail or cut under his wings in the air, sending him chirping and pulling back and forth until Hiccup felt half way to seasick. It was a relief to reach the cove, Hookfang tromping out of the cave to snort hello and Meatlug grunting a greeting as the hatchlings landed, tumbled over themselves, and in one case landed on its back in the snow.

Fishlegs was helping to put the Nightmare hatchling the right way up as Hiccup and Toothless came into land and, reluctantly, Hiccup set about taking Toothless’s tail off. Tongue lolling, Toothless lolloped off to the largest of the caves, in which Elsa had once stayed, and stuck his head in to rumble into the darkness. He came out again a moment later, flaps down and wings drooping at the tips, and chirped at Hiccup.

“Sorry, bud, she’s not here this time,” he said. He had no doubt that Elsa would have gladly spent time with the dragons, but he did not want to risk her feeling as if she was being banished while the meeting with the Berserkers took place. The fact That Burplout and Pinebolt had not yet been told about her magic still grated with Hiccup as it was. “It’s just going to be you guys. I’ll come down at night and take you to get something to eat, though.”

He tucked Toothless’s saddle and tail into the nearest of the caves, little more than a hollow in the rock. At least this time he had thought to wrap it in wool and leather, so that the iron would not risk rusting, or the leather drying out and cracking. It was only by telling himself that he would be back in a few hours that Hiccup could tell himself this was not too much like Dragon Island had been.

“You ready to go, Fishlegs?”

“Don’t eat the limestone, Meatlug, and make sure your babies don’t either,” Fishlegs was saying, kneeling down so that he could look Meatlug in the eye or, at least, the nose. She looked at him dolefully. “You know it upsets your stomach. I’m sure that Hiccup will give you a chance to find some other rocks to eat, right, Hiccup?”

“Sure,” he said automatically. It would only mean finding a quieter stretch of beach on which to land, which should not be a problem on the western side of the island. “They shouldn’t need to be firing, anyway, unless they want to heat up a patch of ground to sleep on. They’ll be fine here. Elsa and Toothless were here for half the summer, after all.”

Fishlegs still looked reluctant, and Hiccup was seriously considering trying to pull the larger boy to his feet when Fishlegs gave in, stood up, and made his way over to Hiccup. He kept glancing over his shoulder, and Meatlug made a whimpering sound that, under other circumstances, might have been funny coming from a three-tonne dragon.

“You want a boost out?” said Hiccup, nodding to the tunnel. It was more for jest than anything else, but it caught Fishlegs’s attention to judge by the way that he looked surprised. “The rocks might be slippery.”

“I think I can manage, thanks. Are you sure that you can?”

At least from Fishlegs there was no risk that was said with bite, rather than concern. “I’m fine,” Hiccup said. “I know where the footholds are.”

The snow still showed the footprints from where the others had left – and a larger impression which was probably one of the twins pushing the other over – and they followed it over to the tunnel out. “I really hope that Ashblade is back this year,” said Fishlegs fervently.

“You’re not the only one.” Not just Hiccup and Astrid, even; he suspected that his father was hoping for Ashblade to return on time and victorious from her viking, ready in a few years to challenge her father to combat and beat him in such a way that tested her just enough to prove her skill. Berk had been one of the first Viking clans to swap to bloodlines, rather than blood drawn, to become chief, but it had not been the last. The Berserkers lingered somewhere between the two, with Osvald having ruled for so long that people respected him for that as much as anything else he had done, and Ashblade had a good enough head on her shoulders that she would probably make a good chief in turn. She was smart, strong, her people liked her, and she got on with other tribes without looking weak for doing so.

And then... there was Dagur.

“Let me say,” continued Fishlegs, voice high and nervous, “I am _not_ going out into the Wildlands even if Dagur is here. Never again.”

“Don’t worry.” Hiccup scrambled up the rock, stepped aside, and brushed snow off his front as Fishlegs followed him. He waved his left foot. “I’ve got a built-in excuse.”

“I had nightmares over that boar,” Fishlegs said, more quietly. His hand slipped, and Hiccup went to grab it, but he managed to catch another handhold and pulled himself up with a grunt. “That was when I decided I was not going to be a hunter.”

That must have been six years ago, but Hiccup remembered it as well; Dagur, twelve and showing off his armband and sword, demanding that Hiccup and the other children of his age come with him. He had assured his father that they would only be sparring with wooden weapons on the edge of the woods, then had forced the other children into the woods with him to look for boar. It had been luck that they found one, already injured and unable to fight back as Dagur hacked it to pieces.

“That’s not how most hunts go, believe me,” said Hiccup grimly. He ducked down into the tunnel, which was mercifully free of ice. “But I think farming is a smarter move anyway,” he added over his shoulder. “You can always find plants, and at least sheep don’t have tusks. A good kick, true;” that was something that he had found out the hard way. “But no tusks.”

Fishlegs half-laughed. “Yeah, I think I’m happy without the glory of hunting.”

“The number of times Spitelout has told the same story about headbutting a boar, I’m not sure how glorious it really is,” said Hiccup dryly. He took a deep breath as they exited the tunnel again. “Besides, let’s look on the bright side. Ashblade was only supposed to be gone for a year, and she wasn’t at the last treaty signing. Maybe that’s why Osvald is coming early this year.”

It made as much sense as anything else which he had managed to think up so far. It was too early in the season for anyone to be trying to declare war on the Berserkers; for any other sort of disaster, they would not want to admit to Berk that it was going on and there was no way that Berk could help them anyway. Even Berk would require more than half-a-dozen ships to declare war, and a simple message would be better sent by one vessel, perhaps two in case of storms, than the six which Hiccup had seen.

Berserkers, traditionally, did not need the most rational of reasons to do things. But Osvald had tended to be more reasonable than most.

“I hope the hatchlings will be all right,” said Fishlegs, with another look back to the tunnel.

Hiccup resolutely did not look round, but could not help a moment of having to desperately hope that the hatchlings had not followed them. Fishlegs probably would have said something, in any case. “There’s plenty of them. They probably think it’s like camping out. No humans to tell them what to do.”

This time, Fishlegs did actually manage something of a laugh. “My sisters always wanted to know what it would be like to not be told what to do...”

“There you go!” Again, he was struck by the fact that they should really check the sexes of the hatchlings, as awkward as that was going to be. Probably better to wait until the female Nightmare stopped licking hers on quite such a regular basis, though, as they were still rather flammable just at the moment. “They can just have a day or two out of the way while the Berserkers are visiting and restocking their water, relax, get away from Snotlout...”

He looked over to Fishlegs in hope of another laugh, but did not get one this time. Lowering his voice and dropping his attempt to be jovial, Hiccup patted Fishlegs on the shoulder.

“They’ll be fine. It’s only for a couple of days.”

“We got shot at, Hiccup,” said Fishlegs, the words blurting out. “We just got _shot_ at! By the Berserkers! They’re supposed to be our allies!”

It probably did feel very different to what had happened with Alvin; most of the others had been sensible enough to stay away from that, anyway, and only Astrid, Elsa and Hiccup had really known what it was like to be fired at. Snotlout had crowed about the fact that they were now adults, having killed the Red Death hatchlings, but it felt different when it was other humans that you were facing.

“They didn’t know that it was us,” said Hiccup, in what he hoped was a calming manner. “All that they saw was dragons. It’s less than a year ago that we would have done the same thing. Things can change that quickly, after all.”

Fishlegs still didn’t look convinced, and Hiccup sighed. This was going to be a long walk back.

 

 

 

 

 

They got back just as it was starting to sleet, fine stinging drops that probably would not be quite warm enough to start the melting of the snow that had built up over the winter. On the plus side, the others had cleared something that resembled a path for Hiccup and Fishlegs to follow, and despite the precaution of taking his cane he had not particularly needed it.

Better still after a long cold hike was the bath sitting in front of the fire, though Hiccup looked around uncertainly in case it was not actually meant for him.

Gobber emerged from the downstairs bedroom with the ceremonial belt in his hand, and Hiccup tried not to look too guilty for having been caught eyeing up the bath. “Don’t worry,” said Gobber. “Elsa’s gone round to Astrid’s for a bit. Probably reappear with her hair redone in time for dinner. You might want to hop in before it gets cold, though.”

Not needing to be told twice, Hiccup immediately pulled off his cloak and started on the rest of his clothes. “Dad working on his beard?”

“How did you guess?” said Gobber. He dropped the belt onto the table and rubbed his chin theatrically. “Hogging the mirror as well. Guess I can just be stubbled when Osvald gets here.”

Stoick’s beard had been looking a bit on the tousled side, Hiccup supposed, so it was about appropriate that he redid it before the Berserkers got here. “Does this mean that my hair is getting cut as well?” said Hiccup, pausing just before he pulled his tunic over his head.

“If there’s time,” said Gobber.

“And none of that new vest of yours!” called Stoick, from the back bedroom.

Sadly, Hiccup had to admit that his father had a point. “I know, I know,” he called back. “Fur it is.”

He pulled off his tunic, bit back on the urge to shiver, and leant against the edge of the bathtub to take off his boot and sock before switching to his left foot. “Wind seems to be holding steady. You think we’ve got until nightfall?”

“Hopefully,” said Gobber. “Phlegma’s on the stores, make sure we’ve got a feast prepared for them, but of course there will need to be something grander tomorrow after the treaty. Spitelout’s giving the armoury the once-over. Once your father finishes fussing over his beard,” Gobber raised his voice slightly, and was summarily ignored for it, “he will be seeing to the Great Hall and making sure that we’ve board for the Berserkers. How many ships, did you say?”

“Three,” said Hiccup. He squirmed out of the last of his clothes and rather rolled himself over the edge of the tub and into the water. It was warm, though Hiccup did feel a pang that he could not ask Toothless to heat it up more for him, and the best feeling of the day since first getting into the air. “They looked small, even for snekkes. Not much more than byrding length.”

“Probably against the weather.” Gobber shook his head. “Osvald’s usually got more sense than this... ah, soap,” he added, as Hiccup searched the corners of the tub and then peered over to see if it had been set on the floor instead. He picked up a fresh bar off the table and lobbed it through the air, Hiccup scrambling to catch it right-handed. “Maybe he’s finally done as the other chiefs asked and remarried.”

Hiccup snorted. That sounded about as likely as Stoick remarrying, or perhaps less likely since if Stoick were not chief and had not wanted to avoid even more talk on other islands about heirs other than Hiccup things might have been different. Osvald had been beyond devoted to his wife, had never really given up on mourning her after she had wasted away, coughing blood. Stoick’s grief was different, folded up into trunks which he did not open, at least in front of Hiccup. Osvald had worn his so blatantly that it had been almost un-Viking-like.

“I know, I know,” said Gobber. “But there must be something.”

“Ashblade might be back from her year viking,” said Hiccup hopefully. Gobber raised an eyebrow. “Don’t give me that look.”

“Osvald talked once about making a match of you two,” Gobber said mildly.

Hiccup groaned and slid down to hide behind the side of the bath. He knew that Gobber only ever talked about the making of matches in order to tease him, and in this case he doubted how true it was at all since Ashblade would be nineteen by now, and was expected to take over from Osvald besides. Stoick never bought up the topic, and tended to sigh whenever Gobber did, though whether it was because his own marriage had been for love or whether he had just despaired of Hiccup for many years, it was rather difficult to say.

“As long as there’s no talk of it this year,” Hiccup finally replied, sitting up again in the tub like a Doomfang emerging from the depths and grabbing the jug from the floor beside him, “I won’t mind. I think dragons will make for a more interesting topic, anyway.”

Gobber gave him a weary look that very clearly asked when he was planning to drop this, and Hiccup looked at him mildly in lieu of replying that he did not intend to. When Gobber turned away, Hiccup dumped a jug of water over his head and set about lathering up the soap to wash his hair.

“Gobber,” called Stoick from the bedroom. “Where did you put that belt?”

The fact that Stoick had not been paying attention said more than anything else about how rattled the sudden visit had made him. Letting go of his teasing, Hiccup concentrated on getting himself clean while making a minimum of mess, which was admittedly easier when Toothless was not trying to climb into the tub with him.

Gobber grabbed the belt, muttering what were probably rather colourful invectives, and marched back into the bedroom once again. If Hiccup craned sideways, he could just see through the door as Stoick set to attempting to wrestle himself into the belt, before giving in and asking Gobber for help. One of these days, he might give in and have new leather added to the belt; there was enough space behind the gold buckle to hide it. But so far pride was winning out, and the belt remained the same size even if Stoick apparently did not.

Towels had been hung by the fire, and it made getting out of the bath a bit easier to know that there was warm fabric waiting for him. Hiccup looked at his wrinkled, damp clothes from earlier in the day and gave up on the lot of them, wrapping the towel under his armpits while he put on his leg and bundled up the clothes together.

The house felt empty without Toothless in the rafters, rumbling his thoughts on the actions beneath and swishing his tail through the air. Hiccup tried not to think of it too much as he made his way upstairs and swapped his clothes out for fresh ones, pulling his fur vest back on with no small regret. He carefully folded up his one with the Night Fury and slipped it into his clothes-chest, folded with the design concealed. If Dagur did come, Hiccup doubted that his propensity for looking through anything and everything would have decreased with the years.

He was dressed again, and was just finishing shipping the bathwater through the back of the house to the garden, when Elsa returned. True to Gobber’s prediction, her hair had been redone again, little braids at her temple leading into a larger twist that curved down over one shoulder. Perhaps Astrid was enjoying the chance to act like a sibling as well, although Hiccup would never dare to say that to her face.

“Well, that must mean that it’s time for dinner,” said Gobber, the comment mercifully seeming to go straight over Elsa’s head. He disappeared into the pantry and raised his voice to call behind him. “Only something light, what with the Berserkers heading in. Just some bread and–”

He cut off as the great horn started blasting once again, and sighed.

“Or not.”

“Friendly boat,” said Hiccup quickly, seeing the look of panic that lit in Elsa’s eyes. “That’s all it is. It’ll be the Berserkers. Wind must have changed after all,” he added at a mutter.

Stoick strode out of the back room, belt in place and cloak over his shoulders. Even the chief did not have much gold on Berk, and this was the most of Stoick’s: a gold Scauldron, rather than the usual iron Nightmare, and gold touches on the studs that patterned the leather. “Winds must have changed,” he announced. “Right, let’s get down to the docks, then.”

“Dad,” Hiccup stepped over and caught hold of Stoick’s arm. “Just before we go...” When Stoick turned around, the set of his spine and the look in his eyes was all _chief_ , and that did not exactly bode well for the next couple of days. Hiccup winced. “Let me guess – we’re not mentioning magic either, are we?”

For just an instant, Stoick hesitated, and Hiccup might not have noticed it just the year before. “Let’s count it similarly to the dragons, hmm?”

It was the best that they could hope for, Hiccup supposed, and nodded. He gave Elsa a warm smile, unsurprised when she did not seem to be able to return it, and reached for his cane before changing his mind and leaving it in place instead. “Let’s go with that. All right. Let’s go meet Osvald.”

Elsa’s hands twisted together in front of her stomach, and she pressed her lips tightly together, watching Stoick cross to the doorway and Gobber, straightening his helmet, followed. Hiccup stepped close and put his hand on her arm, feeling her flinch and preparing to draw back before she relaxed slightly again.

“It’s going to be fine,” he said. “Osvald’s a good guy, as Berserkers go. He’s stopped a lot of the fighting between Viking tribes, and he’s a good host when we visit them.”

It was probably a good thing, he supposed, that this year the Berserkers were visiting Berk and not the other way around. Come summer, when it would be time to renew the treaty with Arendelle, things would be a little different. Unlike the night when Toothless had been on Dragon Island, and Hiccup still on Berk, he had not been apart from Elsa for any real time at all since the Red Death. If it had been a choice between making her see Berserker Island, or leaving her here without him, he was not sure that he would have wanted to make it.

“Your father still worries,” she said, “about the magic.”

“My father worries about everything,” replied Hiccup. “It’s part of chiefing, I suppose. He also worries about this,” he gestured to his leg, “about the weather, about Gobber brewing poteen in the pantry again.”

Elsa gave him a look that was older than he was used to thinking of her as being. “You know those are not the same,” she said.

“No, but they might not be as wildly different as you think,” said Hiccup firmly. “Come on, come and meet the Berserkers with us. There’ll be a bit of a crowd being nosy, don’t worry.”

Still she hesitated, until Hiccup extended his hand to her almost pointedly. Finally Elsa gave him a tired smile and reached over to take his hand briefly, squeezing, her skin so cold that it hurt. Then she released him again and turned towards the door, which Stoick was still holding open as he tried to catch Hiccup’s eye.

All that Hiccup wanted to do was get down to the docks and get this charade underway.

The night was closing in as they made their way down, the sky fast darkening and the air turning cold, though mercifully the sleet was holding off. By the time that they reached the docks, the first of the Berserker boats was just coming in, oars working against the waves and sail furled. The Skrill still snarled from their figurehead, and there was plenty of green in the patterns of the shields all along the sides. To better show the blood, or so the saying went.

One of the Berserkers came to the prow and hollered to shore, and Brynnhild acknowledged the hail and caught the rope that they threw to shore. She lashed the rope into place to help guide in the prow of the boat, and Stoick took a couple of steps further along the wharf to make sure that he was opposite the clear area of gunwhale where the gangplank would be put down. Hiccup shuffled quickly aside to get out of the way.

There was something tense in the air, far worse than two years ago when the Berserkers had last visited Berk, and even Snotlout had noticed it to judge by the way that the excitement had faded from his face. From the corner of his eye, Hiccup could see Elsa fiddling with her trollwort bracelets again, and wished that he had something that was anywhere near as handy to fiddle with. It felt wrong to have Toothless in the cove and not even represented on his vest.

Finally, the snekke came to a halt, two more Berserkers throwing down the gangplank. Stoick stepped forward, the greeting on his lips as it would be every year, when the two Berserkers straightened up and banged the butts of their spears against the hull, before one of them started to talk over everyone.

“Presenting!” He declared. “The Great Chief of the Berserker Tribe! Spiller of blood! Master of sword-song!”

If Hiccup had thought that Spitelout had no grasp of quieting his voice, it was only because he had never met this man. The only reason that he did not take a step back was because it would have dropped him into the water.

“The great! And daunting!”

“Osvald?” said Stoick softly.

The Berserker stepped smartly aside to reveal a figure that was definitely not Osvald.

“Dagur, the Deranged!”

Oh, Thor. Hiccup felt an actual chill run down his spine as Dagur turned, grinned wolfishly, and cracked his neck to the side. He was more heavily armoured than Hiccup had ever seen him, helmet horned and spiked, left arm heavily bound and braced, and had both a sword on his back and an axe at his hip. He swaggered to the gangplank and down it, torchlight throwing shadows across his face behind his helmet.

Stoick was the first one to find his voice. “Dagur,” he said, like dropping a rock into still water. “As Chief of the Hooligan Tribe I welcome you to Berk. You have come early this year.”

“A true Viking does not fear the sea,” said Dagur airily. He looked them over haughtily, starting with Stoick and glancing to one side to take in Gobber and Spitelout before scanning the other way to look at Hiccup and Elsa. Mercifully, his gaze did not linger on Elsa, although she would be the only new one there. “I only hope that you are ready for me.”

“I’m sure that you will find us satisfactory,” said Stoick. “Where is your father?”

Dagur’s smile didn’t waver. “My father is, as you can see, no longer Chief. From now on, you deal with me. So,” he squared up to Stoick, looking him in the eye with challenge in every line of his body. “Tell me. How is Berk’s little... dragon problem?”

“You needn’t worry, Dagur. You’re in no danger during your visit.”

Dagur scowled thunderously, hand twitching towards the handle of the sword at his side, and Hiccup felt his father shift slightly as well. It would have been an insult and a shame both for Stoick to not be wearing a sword in kind for such a meeting. “I’m quite sure,” said Dagur coolly, looking again at the others who were assembled more broadly around the wharves – the Jorgensons closest, but there were various others come down out of curiosity, and Astrid with her arms folded and warning in her eyes. “That you know that isn’t what I meant.”

“Oh?” said Stoick. “How so?”

“There are stories, Stoick,” Dagur said. He put his hands on his hips, right one not all that far away from his sword. “About Berk, the Red Death...”

He let the words linger in the air, and Hiccup felt as he had been punched in the stomach, air driven from his lungs. Outcast Island had been a logical place for dissenters like Lugstick to end up, but clearly he had been the only one to get there. There were others, and for all of their promises not to speak of what had happened, Hiccup was not sure that he trusted them.

“Come,” said Stoick, going to clap Dagur on the shoulder but catching himself at the last minute and simply waving up the slope again instead. “Let’s head on up to the Great Hall, and I’m sure we can sort out any misunderstandings.”

“Misunderstandings.” Dagur rolled the word around his mouth thoughtfully, glanced over Stoick, and fixed Hiccup with an overly-piercing stare. The smile returned. “Yes, I’m sure that we can figure out any... misunderstandings.”

Dagur slapped Hiccup on the shoulder so hard that it almost sent him pitching sideways into Elsa, then hooked an arm around him and dragged them shoulder-to-shoulder. Or, more precisely, shoulder-to-chest; Dagur had grown about a foot back when he was about thirteen, and had towered over Hiccup ever since. It only ever managed to make things more awkward.

Behind Dagur, Stoick gave Hiccup a look that was something between warning and concerned, and Hiccup did his best to smile in return. He would need to step back for a while to get his head cleared and figure out what to do, but in the first instant that he had seen Dagur, he had known one thing for certain: they could not say anything about the dragons.

“Yeah,” said Hiccup. He squirmed his elbows out to get a bit more room between himself and Dagur, but did not quite manage to push the older boy away. “I’m sure we can figure things out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Bhrian Bloodaxe is something between William Tell and a Pratchett reference. GNU Terry Pratchett.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dagur starts with the inappropriate and unwanted touching, and Hiccup tries to get himself out of trouble in a way that just opens up new problems instead.

They had just reached the top of the stairs from the docks when a sheep, covered in mud and leaves, streaked past them with a continuous terrified bleat. Without a pause for breath, it bleated on as it ran straight across the path of the group, round a corner, and disappeared among the houses of Berk.

“Have you changed your sheep-keeping habits in the last two years?” said Dagur dryly.

Hiccup did not have the opportunity to reply before two more sheep followed, these ones quiet but wide-eyed, and he closed his eyes and sighed as he realised that someone’s entire flock must have escaped again. “Whose–”

Silent Sven, brandishing a pitchfork, followed the line of the sheep across and into Berk.

“Never mind,” said Hiccup. Silent Sven had the largest flock of sheep on the island, and if they were out then they were going to be everywhere. It had only happened two or three times before, but last time around even Hiccup had been dragged out to assist in their capture, which only went to show just how desperate people had been. In his current state, he was not going to be much help in chasing down anything, but it would probably help a lot if they had Stoick. “Say, Dagur, why don’t we head on up to the Great Hall and warm up a bit?”

“Sounds like a grand idea,” said Stoick. “You lads go on ahead, and I’ll...” He trailed off as Dagur cleared his throat pointedly, and continued in a voice that could have cut stone. “Is there a problem, Dagur?”

“I believe that a tour of Berk is the first item on our itinerary, according to the treaty.”

Another sheep ran past, and a moment later, further down the road, Silent Sven crossed in the opposite direction. “Well, certainly,” said Hiccup, while his father was still looking at Dagur with that barely-restrained annoyance with which Hiccup was so familiar. “We’re aware of that, but it is getting to be a little late at night. Tomorrow will have better light to see everything by.”

Dagur paused, then nodded slowly. “Very well. The tour can start at first light. Hiccup can accompany me to the Great Hall.” He squeezed Hiccup’s shoulder and started to tug him off in the appropriate direction.

There was another terrified bleat in the background, and Stoick sighed. “I’ll meet you there as soon as I can,” said Stoick levelly, and Hiccup looked over his shoulder as best he could to nod.

“Elsa, why don’t you help the Chief?” he said, trying to gesture in his father’s direction with his head. She was still looking confused, but as Hiccup looked intently she gave a hasty nod and took a step towards Stoick.  “Dagur and I will be just fine.”

He really, really hoped that he wasn’t lying.

 

 

 

 

 

It was easy enough to keep Dagur moving in the direction of the Great Hall, despite the sounds of sheep, running feet and muffled cursing throughout the village. He kept an arm slung around Hiccup’s shoulders, though Hiccup made sure not to do anything that could be misconstrued as leaning on Dagur even as his leg began to feel stiff from the awkward way that having that arm in place made him walk.

“So tell me,” said Dagur, “what _has_ changed here in the last couple of years, hmm? I don’t see quite so many defences as there used to be.”

“Well, we didn’t have the best of winters,” said Hiccup, hoping that it would sound relatively neutral. “There’ll be some rebuilding to do in the summer.”

The trick was to not actually lie, he told himself. Leave things out, let Dagur fill in the gaps, but don’t actually lie. Not that Dagur was good at spotting them, but he was very inclined to get angry if he did.

“Come now, Hiccup,” said Dagur, with another of those uncomfortable squeezes. “There’s no need to play coy with me. I’ve heard all about your little adventure last summer.”

Hiccup would have sworn that his heart stuttered in his chest, and he dared not turn his eyes away from the Great Hall. For one terrible moment, it was as if he was in front of the Outcasts once again, with Alvin leaning down over him, but he pushed the thought away. The Berserkers had been Berk’s allies since the time of his great-grandfather, and he had seen what the Outcasts had needed to do in order to get Lugstick to give them even half the story. Even so, he laughed nervously. “Oh, I’m sure that you haven’t heard all of it.”

“I’m sure that I’ve heard enough. You, the Red Death,” his voice dropped slightly, “a trained dragon...”

This time, it was definitely a nervous laugh, however much Hiccup tried to rescue it back into sounding amused. “A trained dragon? Who came up with _that_ idea?” Dagur was looking at him dubiously, but considering this was the first year in a very long time that Dagur had not tried to inflict violence upon him in the first few minutes of their meeting, Hiccup figured that pushing his luck might be worth it. “I mean, what would you use? Table scraps and shouting at them?”

Dagur narrowed his eyes a little, then went back to nonchalance and shrugged. “A pity, if I have been misled.”

“I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding,” said Hiccup quickly. “I mean, it’s just,” he groped for something that might work as an explanation. “Cunning.” That sounded suitably Viking-like. “If you can predict dragon behaviour, if you know what they’re going to do, then I suppose that could look like you’ve trained them.”

“Hmm,” said Dagur, which could have meant anything or nothing, but did not break stride on his continuing way towards the Great Hall. As they reached the foot of the steps, Hiccup gritted his teeth against the discomfort in his leg. “Well, I’m sure you can tell me all about it this evening.”

“Of course,” he said, resisting the urge to beat the heel of his hand against his forehead. “No problem.”

Dagur chuckled to himself and continued to steer Hiccup towards the wide-open doors of the Great Hall. The fires had been kept lit even this late in the winter, and a welcoming light spilled out, though it was much quieter than usual. At a guess, Stoick had decided that the Great Hall would be the best place for most of their guests to sleep, although he had probably arranged for a house to be found for Dagur and perhaps his closest retainers. It was what Hiccup would have done if faced with a large number of Berserkers in a painfully short space of time.

“So, Dagur,” Hiccup continued, hoping against hope that he would be able to take the reins of the conversation. “How was your voyage here?”

“Oh, the usual,” said Dagur with a wave of his hand. “Some rough seas, no storms, no Darkbreathers or Thunderdrums. We did see some dragons in the distance, but unfortunately they got scared before we could get more than one round fired at them. Pity, really.”

It was a good thing that Hiccup was used to not getting what he hoped for. “Wow,” he said finally. “That sounds... unfortunate.”

“Quite strange, really,” Dagur continued, apparently unaware of the fact that Hiccup was trying not to wince. “One of them had a very peculiar fire. Blue, not like the usual ones.”

Toothless had been the only one to fire, but Hiccup supposed that none of the other tribes knew anything about Night Furies. Even if Berk had known so little, there had been something. “Perhaps it was something that it ate,” he said weakly.

Dagur paused, and for a horrible moment Hiccup thought that he was going to point out what absolute nonsense Hiccup’s suggestion was. Then he laughed, gave Hiccup a shake, and dragged him into the Great Hall itself. “Well! You know, I never really appreciated... _cunning_...”

Hiccup really did not like the sound of that word in Dagur’s mouth.

“Until I heard about you, and the Red Death. You really must tell me all about that.”

“Only if you tell me all about becoming Chief,” he replied, forcing himself to keep sounding both cheerful and interested. Although interest probably did come into it, at least in the sense of morbid fascination as to how Dagur had wormed his way into chiefdom when everyone had expected Ashblade to take Osvald’s place. Dagur had always been more than willing to talk about himself, in any case.

“I should,” said Dagur decisively. “After all, some day you will be Chief of this tribe, and we will make a most formidable alliance.”

“Not for a long time yet,” said Hiccup quietly, unable to hold back the words but not really meaning them for Dagur. “So, I guess that your father is enjoying his retirement?”

Large barrels of mead had been cracked open once again and set at the side of the hall, and Hiccup had no doubt that they would be broken open before too long. A large cauldron was ready at the fire, Phlegma standing almost protectively over it and eyeing the Berserkers none too happily.

“Not many of your men,” said Dagur, cast his gaze over the hall. He did not sound impressed by it. “I thought that you said there was to be a feast.”

“The grand feast will be tomorrow, after the signing of the treaty,” Hiccup reassured him. No differently from any other occasion that one of the parties had arrived late in the day at the other’s island. “For now, we just want to make sure that you are comfortable after your journey.”

All that earnt him was a grunt. It only took a glance for Dagur to identify the top table and start marching towards it, all but dragging Hiccup along with him as he went. Hiccup spared a glance over his shoulder, but the three Berserker soldiers closest to them were barely distinguishable, even wearing almost identical armour. Dagur hadn’t deigned to give them any names either.

“Phlegma does a very good yak stew,” added Hiccup, aiming for optimistic but concerned that he had landed in desperate instead. He had not missed the way that Dagur ignored his question. “She says it’s all in the herbs. Won’t share her secrets. And there’ll be plenty of fresh bread from the Firesens.”

One of the better aspects of Berk, at least if you were the Firesens and worked the mill, was that there was plenty of wind to grind their flour for them. As long as they could store the rye and the wheat for it, Berk could have bread all the way through the winter.

“It would be good to eat hot food again,” said Dagur. “Not that it is needed by warriors,” he gave Hiccup’s shoulder another squeeze, almost pulling him over. It was starting to get clammy having Dagur’s hand against his shoulder, but Hiccup did his best to ignore it. “But it can be pleasant to have something warm in the belly.”

His other hand had stayed on the hilt of his sword the entire time, something which Hiccup could not help feeling uncomfortable about. The Berserkers favoured slightly shorter and broader swords than Berkians, to go with the slightly smaller shields they preferred when they used shields at all. It was far from unheard of for them to simply not bother, and most used axes, but chieftains were supposed to carry swords and so it was a sword that dangled from Dagur’s hip.

“Indeed it can be,” said Hiccup. He had a feeling that he was going to be expected to stay for the whole of the meal, something which Osvald had never pushed for.

“I daresay there were not many hot meals on the way to Dragon Island?” said Dagur. He gestured to one of his men and pointed in the direction of the mead, and waved another towards Phlegma and the cauldron, as they neared the top table.

Hiccup laughed, possibly not very convincingly. “Well, dragons can be quite enough when it comes to heat.”

“True! So,” Dagur finally released Hiccup to take the top seat of the table, and Hiccup guessed well enough where this was going and sat down beside him. “The Red Death.” He propped his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands, and gave Hiccup that unwavering, hungry smile.

“It was on Dragon Island all along,” said Hiccup. He sat very upright, not leaning on the table, and regretted that he had not thought to sit just a few inches further away. “And it means that we can confirm its existence in the Book of Dragons.”

“Yes, that book of yours. What was it _like_ , though?” He leant a little further forwards. “Was it large?”

Hiccup could not have lied about that even if he had wanted to. By now he could be sure that there were some memories of that day he would never have, but he recalled falling through the air with the cavernous mouth of the Red Death looming open above him, swallowing up the sky. “Larger than we could have imagined. Enough to swallow other dragons whole. From the size of its mouth, I mean,” he added swiftly.

Dagur either did not notice or did not care, and merely slipped one hand out from under his chin to gesture for Hiccup to continue. He took a deep breath.

“It was grey, mostly. Blue-grey, like ocean rocks, but reddish on its belly, and with these red spines all over. It had this fringe,” Hiccup gestured at around shoulder height, “shaped like wrack, and a tail like a club. Six eyes,” he said. He wondered if there had been a moment that he had looked into them, whether he had seen anything there. If so, he did not remember it. “Huge wings. We didn’t realise at first that it could even use them to fly.”

“Yes, yes. But how did you kill it?”

In flames and ashes and shattering bones, but that was not what Dagur was going to hear. Hiccup swallowed against the tightness in his throat, and was given a momentary reprieve as one of Dagur’s indistinguishable soldiers returned with two horns of mead and held them out. Dagur gestured for Hiccup to take one; he chose the smaller, and mentally weighed up the costs of having to talk a lot against those of actually drinking the mead he was bound to have pressed on him.

“It was too big for our weapons,” said Hiccup. Somehow, telling Dagur felt worse than telling Alvin had done; at least he had been telling Alvin under duress, out of need. Dagur was taking the story from him without even realising the importance of what he asked. “Even the catapults, the spars...” _Bodies on the ground, red on grey sand; had there even been something left to recover after the Red Death fell?_ “But we provoked it into the air. When it tried to strike at us, it miscalculated. The fire, the smoke. It crashed down.”

Dagur waited a moment as Hiccup ran out of words, then his smile slipped. “Was that it?” he said, raising his chin from his hands. “It just crashed?”

“What else can you do with a dragon that size?” said Hiccup, with a shrug. It felt as if something was crawling around in his stomach, but Dagur would object if Hiccup seemed to be holding back any information. And that was really the best-case scenario.

“Hmm. Perhaps the smaller dragons are more sporting,” Dagur said. He took a hearty swig of his mead, eyes staying on Hiccup, and Hiccup got the point and took a slow sip of mead as well. “I daresay you’ve been killing them since, hmm?”

“I’ve certainly been spending a lot of time around dragons,” said Hiccup, with absolute honesty.

That seemed to cheer Dagur, and he laughed again before draining the horn. He waved it at one of his Berserkers, who took it from his hand and headed in the direction of a replacement. “Excellent! Perhaps you and I can go hunting them this summer.”

Hiccup, who had just taken another sip of mead, almost snorted it out of his nose as the suggestion left Dagur’s lips. Coughing, he raised one hand to his mouth, but was painfully aware that Dagur was looking sullenly offended at the lack of an immediate and enthusiastic answer. “Sorry,” he said. “Went down the wrong way.” He cleared his throat. “My leg, you know. I’m... still getting used to it.”

He felt a nudge against his metal foot which felt worryingly as if Dagur had just poked it with his boot. “Unusual design. The blacksmith’s?”

Hiccup did not even bother correcting Dagur on names after this many years. “Mostly mine. Gobber did some fine-tuning, I think.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll... grow into it,” said Dagur.

He considered downing the entire horn of mead, to see if it would make the conversation less awkward, seeing as it could not possibly make it more so. By some rare blessing of the gods, however, not only did one of the Berserkers appear with bowls of stew and an entire loaf of bread, but Stoick stomped into the Great Hall brushing off his shoulders. If Hiccup squinted, it looked a little like rain outside.

As Dagur turned his attention to the stew, Hiccup gave his father a look of intense gratitude. Not that Stoick looked at all happy about Dagur having taken the top chair, which Hiccup thought was rather understandable. Every year, Stoick would offer the chair to Osvald, but every year Osvald would decline. He did not need to attempt to enforce his authority in another’s chiefdom, he would say.

“Dagur,” said Stoick, looming up over the table.

Dagur accepted the horn of mead with which one of his men returned before acknowledging him. “Stoick, how good of you to join us. Hiccup was just telling me about his vanquishing of the Red Death.”

Stoick’s impeccably straight face was a question in itself, and Hiccup gave him an awkward smile for an answer. Stoick had never needed to deal with Dagur away from the calming – or at least mitigating – influences of his father and sister, but Hiccup had spent far too much time doing so over the years.  “Well,” he said. “If I may borrow my son for a word.”

Hiccup did not even wait for Dagur’s would-be-gracious wave of a hand before sliding his legs out from beneath the table and making his escape. He got in front of his father so that he could heave a sigh of relief without being seen, and chucked the horn of mead into one of the large fires. It sizzled slightly on the wood, but wasn’t exactly noticeable.

“What is going on?” said Stoick in something approaching an undertone.

“Dagur just wants to know about the Red Death,” Hiccup said grimly. “He’s not let me talk about anything else.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“What do you think I told him?” snapped Hiccup. Just because he had wanted to tell Osvald about the dragons, and the peace, did not mean that he wanted Dagur to know anything about dragons on Berk. “The least that I could. He thinks that I tricked the Red Death into crashing.”

Behind the beard, Stoick’s lips were pressed tightly together, and his brow was as furrowed as ever. “All right. Make sure that is all that he hears. I will talk to him.”

For which Hiccup was unendingly grateful. He gladly let his father lead the way back to the table, even if he knew better than to try to not sit next to Dagur, and sank back into the same seat as before. There was only a moment’s hesitation from Stoick, behind Dagur’s back, before he stepped around and sank onto the bench opposite Hiccup without even commenting on the appropriated top chair.

Dagur looked up from his stew at last, leaning back in the chair and ripping a hunk of bread off the end of the loaf. “Ah, Stoick. Solved your little sheep problem, then?”

“Yes, thank you, Dagur. We find it does well to work together around here.”

“And, of course, that is what this is all about.” There was something jagged at the edge of Dagur’s voice, but if Hiccup was quite honest he could not guess what it was about. Dagur was all too easy to read in some ways and far too unpredictable in others.

Stoick led the conversation smoothly into this year’s exchange of goods; although the treaty arranged for a certain amount to be set every year, mostly in iron from the Berserkers exchanged for dragon bone and hide from the Berkians. Hiccup had known that this was coming as well, but he still had to bite his tongue as Stoick set about discussing the trade which would take place. In the dark, it seemed that Dagur had not noticed the rooves that were now tile or slate, and not dragon hide, though if he was completely honest Hiccup was not sure how much attention Dagur was likely to pay to rooves. Probably depended on whether something had been killed to make them.

He buried himself in the stew instead, which really was good, if not quite enough to distract him from the fact that his father was calmly bartering with the remains of dragons. When he was younger, he might have been able to simply leave, but that was no longer an option; he did not even have the reassuring presences of Toothless and Elsa, as he had grown used to over the last months.

Frustration bubbled through him. He was still batting at the thoughts, frowning to himself and trailing his spoon through the last of the stew in his bowl, when a hand came to rest on his thigh.

Hiccup froze. The hand stayed in place, a little above his knee, and without moving his head he turned his eyes to confirm that it was, indeed, Dagur’s hand. Rather than one that had mysteriously appeared, or whatever else he had been desperately hoping that it would be.

Slowly, in muted horror, Hiccup looked round at Dagur. The Berserker showed no sign that anything was amiss as he continued talking coolly to Stoick, discussing the fine points of whether Gobber or a Berserker representative would be the one to verify the quality of the iron. Normally, Hiccup would have been able to summon a pertinent comment for this discussion, but for some unfathomable reason he found himself unable to on this occasion.

Instead, he reached below the table and tried to push Dagur’s hand away, without letting anything show in his expression. All that happened was that Dagur’s fingers caught hold of his, stroking them in a way that made Hiccup feel more uncomfortable than hand-to-hand contact had any right to. Pulling his hand away from Dagur’s, Hiccup tried to shuffle further down the bench, but stopped both as Dagur’s hand tightened on his thigh and as his father looked at him curiously. He grabbed one of the last pieces of bread and set about wiping the last of the stew out of the bottom of his bowl, keeping both hands firmly in view.

“Well,” said Stoick after a short, heavy moment, turning back to Dagur again. “I’m sure that we can find a solution. What about having both of them look it over?”

“That could work,” Dagur said. It would have been a successful moment had he not squeezed Hiccup’s knee again as he said it. “So, have you arranged a sleeping place for my men for the evening?”

“I thought the Great Hall would be fitting for them,” said Stoick, with just the subtlest of emphasis on the _Great_. “For your own retinue, I have had one of our houses outfitted and made suitable for someone of your standing.”

Dagur raised an eyebrow slightly, but actually looked something close to impressed, by which Hiccup was very relieved. He sat back in the chair and folded his arms over his chest, nodding slowly. “Appropriate. I accept your offer.”

Taking the opportunity, Hiccup shuffled an extra six inches down the bench and pushed his bowl away.

“Very good,” said Stoick. “I’m sure that Hiccup will be glad to accompany you there. Which of your men would I speak to about overseeing the rest of your people while you are separate from them?”

Hiccup tried by strength of will alone to tell his father what a bad offer he had just made, but sadly the message did not get through as Stoick simply got to his feet.

With a mutter to himself, Dagur glanced around, surveying his men. Only they remained in the hall, Phlegma having handed over control of the cauldron to the first one brave or foolish enough to approach her. He still looked a little confused.

“Speak to Bloodstain,” said Dagur finally, waving towards one of his men who had some sort of red fabric hanging from his belt. “I’ll leave him in charge of the other men this evening.”

“Very well.” Stoick nodded. “Hiccup, the house with the red Nadder above the doorway. You know the one.”

“Yes, chief,” said Hiccup. He was really, really going to have to talk to his father about this.

 

 

 

 

 

At first, he thought that Dagur might have managed to get the hint, because the older boy did not so much as put his arm around Hiccup’s shoulders as they made their way to the designated house, a handful of Berserkers who probably made up Dagur’s retinue in tow.

“You know,” said Dagur, “I can’t help wondering about the... trained dragons.”

Hiccup had really hoped that part of the conversation had been left behind some hours ago, and grimaced to himself. “I’m sure they were just being metaphorical, Dagur. I mean, who would be mad enough to try and train a dragon?”

“I’m not sure you’d have to be mad,” said Dagur. “Maybe just Berserk.”

Or Deranged, Hiccup could not help thinking, although he doubted that Dagur’s idea of _training_ a dragon would be anything like what he and the others had ended up doing. He often felt like he was training his friends, and the dragons were the ones assisting him, rather than the other way around.

“I mean...” Dagur continued, and Hiccup felt a momentary stab of concern as Dagur’s hand drifted to waist level. Mercifully it came to rest on his belt buckle, stroking the outline of the Skrill there, black on gold. “My ancestors once trained the Skrill, or so the stories say. Until they were wiped out,” he added, with a darker look at Hiccup.

There were pages about the Skrill in his father’s copy of the Book of Dragons, but it had been some time since Hiccup had read that one. For most of the dragons, Gobber’s copy had far more information, and all that Hiccup could really remember was that they had not been seen for something like two centuries.

“Well, maybe those were the stories they were thinking of,” said Hiccup, as they reached the house. The door had been set ajar, and the light from inside told him that a fire had been banked already. “And here we go,” he said, pushing the door further open and waving for Dagur and the others to enter. “One freshly chief-worthy house.”

Dagur casually gestured for his men to enter first. “Prepare the best of the rooms for me,” he said to one of them. “Otherwise, arrange yourselves as you please. You,” he put his hand out to stop the last man entering. “Go down to the docks for my effects.”

“Yes, chief,” said the man, turning smartly on his heel to hurry away.

Which, somewhat worryingly, left Dagur and Hiccup standing on the doorstep of the house. Hiccup glanced around and tried to summon words that would allow him to make his escape, but before he was able to do so Dagur stepped in and put one hand up to the wall of the house, right at Hiccup’s head-height.

“So,” said Hiccup. He pressed back against the wall, as far away as he could manage as Dagur loomed over him. “I... hope that you have a comfortable night, and that you sleep well.”

“So, Hiccup,” said Dagur, with a smile. It was a little softer than before, which only made Hiccup worry more about what was coming next. Dagur put his other hand on his hip, leaning in closer, until Hiccup was trying not to breathe too deeply for fear that they would brush against each other. “Here we are. Alone.”

“Well, not all that...” Hiccup pointed a thumb through the open doorway in which he stood, towards Dagur’s men. “Alone.”

“My men have discretion. Besides, I am the chief, you are the son of a chief,” Dagur reached up to run one fingertip down Hiccup’s chest, not breaking eye contact. “There is nothing to stop us discussing the affairs of our tribes.”

He had to be choosing the words deliberately. There was no way that someone could come out with that accidentally. Hiccup gave a nervous laugh and glanced around in search of an escape route again, but Dagur’s arm was in the way and he wasn’t sure that he had enough room to duck under it. Even if that would have been an option without potentially starting a fight between Berk and the Berserkers after fifty years of peace.

“I’m really flattered, Dagur,” said Hiccup, only a shade away from sincerely. “But I’m really not–”

“I get it. You probably don’t really talk about it, despite... well, you know despite what.”

Hiccup had a strong suspicion that he knew exactly what Dagur was referring to, and even if he were interested, even the most veiled of references to his father and Gobber was really not something that would have helped matters. “Dagur,” he said more firmly, “I do know ‘what’, but–”

“So how about you come inside and talk for a while?”

Another spectacularly one-sided conversation. Hiccup took a deep breath and looked Dagur in the eye; the last thing that he intended was to go into a house full of Berserkers, especially after having had his thigh squeezed in the Great Hall. “Dagur, I’m not–”

“As I said… chief… son of a chief;” Dagur put his hand on Hiccup’s chest again, this time with his fingers spread and palm pressed right down hard enough to make Hiccup feel a bit more pinned in place. “We can talk... man to man.”

The worst part might have been that Dagur was still smiling, or it might have been that when Hiccup reached up to pull Dagur’s hand away, Dagur instead took hold of that hand and promptly pinned it to the wall behind Hiccup’s head, now very definitely pinning him in place. “ _Dagur_ ,” said Hiccup, more firmly. It was unsurprisingly difficult to imitate his father’s stern, in-control behaviour given the circumstances. This was not a situation that Hiccup had anticipated when the destruction of the Red Death had dragged him back into everyone’s attentions. “I’m flattered, but no. Any discussions about the treaty should still be with the chief, and that is what you are here for, right?”

“I admire your dedication to the role of chief,” said Dagur, which was not at all an answer, and did not release Hiccup’s hand. For one petty moment, Hiccup wished that Toothless was there just because it might actually dissuade Dagur from whatever he thought he was doing, but then again if Toothless were here there would be bigger problems than this.

“Dagur, please let go of my arm,” Hiccup said as calmly as he could manage. It did not help that it was his left hand that was in Dagur’s grip, or that he could feel himself starting to get annoyed in a way that usually resulted in him running his mouth. “I’m sure you’re a very attractive man, but–”

“Well, you’ve... got brains.”

Like that. Hiccup would have closed his eyes and sighed at himself, but he didn’t want to look away from Dagur right at this moment. He tried to pull his hand away, but Dagur was right-handed and having no problem holding Hiccup in place. At least the backhanded compliment was much easier to ignore. “Dagur, I’m not interested. Please let go of my arm.”

His natural instinct was to apologise, but doing so right now was probably going to be a very bad idea. Dagur never had needed encouragement once he had decided on something.

“Why don’t you come inside, and we can talk this out?”

“I’m married.”

It was out of his mouth without him even thinking about it. Dagur looked at Hiccup in astonishment, and Hiccup would probably have given himself a similar look if he had been able to. Apparently the part of his mind which usually contented itself with irreverent comments had decided on this occasion to skip straight to the one thing which might actually get Dagur to stop making his very pointed suggestions.

On the plus side, Dagur did at least loosen his grip on Hiccup’s wrist. “You’re what?”

Hiccup retrieved his hand, bringing it down to his chest. “Married,” he said again, as there was really no way of going back on a statement like that in a situation like this. “I... you understand.”

Dagur looked him up and down as if Hiccup had suddenly sprouted a third arm. Or at least grown his foot back. “Since when?”

“This winter,” said Hiccup. “Whirlwind... thing. You know.”

It wasn’t that unthinkable. He knew that Arendelle could be a little sniffy about early marriages, but then again they did not count adults as adults until they were twenty-one. As had been stated and restated in the last few months, Hiccup and his peer group were all adults by Berkian rules, with dragon kills to their names; some islands of the Viking Archipelago considered adulthood to come even earlier and without that, as soon as someone was given their armband on which they could swear oaths before their chief. Hiccup’s own mother Valka had been just shy of sixteen when she and Stoick had married. Hiccup, of course, was hardly thinking of marriage as something in his near future. At least until his treacherous mouth had decided to get out of one problem by talking himself straight into another.

“And you did not invite a Berserker representative?” said Dagur, voice now growing a little colder.

“It was the winter,” Hiccup said. “Not a good sailing season. I mean, the Berserkers are Berk’s closest allies, but we just didn’t want to endanger you guys.”

It seemed to be accepted, and Dagur nodded slowly. “So I get to meet her?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. Oh, Thor help him. Or perhaps Loki; a trickster would hopefully have a better solution than a lightning bolt, although the lightning bolt was also looking like a valid option right now. “I assure you.”

“Hmm.” Dagur straightened up and removed the other arm from the door as well, letting Hiccup take a deep breath for the first time in what felt like quite a long while. “Well, this is a turn of events. I look forward to it.” Turning on his heel, he walked – not quite stormed, but not all that far off – into the house, pushing the door closed behind him hard enough to send Hiccup staggering.

Slowly and painfully, Hiccup curled his hand into a fist and did his best to force it into his mouth. Perhaps taking a lesson from Silent Sven would be in order. For now, the best he could think of was to go home and admit to his father exactly what he had managed to get himself into this time.

On one hand, it was not a dragon. On the other, it might just be harder to get himself out of.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for this chapter being a day late; real life got busy.

Hiccup entered the house, closed the door, and immediately turned towards the stairs. “If anyone needs me, I will be moving to the cove. Possibly permanently.”

“What have you done?” said Gobber, looking up from where he sat.

“What have _I_ done?” Hiccup spluttered. “I was not the one...”

He could not even say it. With a groan, Hiccup put his face in his hands and tried to figure out how he could possibly get himself out of this one.

“Hiccup? Are you all right?” said Stoick.

Well, that just made things even better. Hiccup had not been sure whether or not his father would be home, although to be honest he had not been able to come up with any sensible ideas either way whilst trying to walk home and keep his eyes screwed shut in mortification at the same time. Given the circumstances, he couldn’t even appreciate the slightly more gently-phrased question.

“Oh, I am just brilliant,” Hiccup said flatly. “Once again, I have opened my mouth and inserted my foot firmly into it, only this time it’s not in front of Alvin, whom I can actually get away with lying to, or you, where I’ve nothing important to lie _about_. Oh, no, this time, I’ve gone and said something stupid to _Dagur_ , and unless I somehow come up with a way to explain that I’m actually not married, by tomorrow, I’ve probably just blown up the treaty with the Berserkers.”

As the words left him, Hiccup started laughing, dropping his hands from his face to flourish them in the air instead. He did so just in time to see Stoick and Gobber exchange a look of complete bewilderment, which somehow only made the situation feel more absurd. There might have been an edge of hysteria in Hiccup’s voice as he leant back against the wall.

“Married?” said Stoick finally. “Hiccup, what are you talking about? Of course you aren’t married!”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed. Well, let me just correct my earlier comments to Dagur and all will be well and good.”

At that, Stoick and Gobber looked at each other again as if the other one would have somehow unravelled the pure nonsense which Hiccup was quite aware that he was speaking. He just could not quite wrap words around it all, the ridiculous situation in which he had found himself and the equally ridiculous solution – for a given value of ‘solution’ – which he had come up with.

“Hiccup,” said Stoick, more carefully, crossing over as slowly as if he was creeping up on a wild animal. “What are you talking about?”

Here went nothing. “In order to get Dagur to stop making... certain suggestions,” he said, because he was still talking to his father, after all, “I may have told him that I am... married. And now I’m not really sure what to do, so I’m thinking becoming a hermit and living in the cove is the best idea.”

“Suggestions? Wh–” Hiccup was fairly sure that he could see the exact moment that Stoick caught onto exactly what suggestions might have been made that Hiccup thought to get away from them by declaring himself married. Stoick’s expression darkened, and his hand went for where the hilt of his sword would normally rest. “How dare he.”

“Are you sure that’s what was going on?” said Gobber quickly, getting to his feet and putting a hand on Stoick’s arm. “There’s no way you could have... misconstrued something?” he made a vague gesture with his hook.

Hiccup could not help a snort. “Oh, I think his hand on my thigh would be pretty hard to misconstrue.”

Stoick made a sort of choking noise, and Hiccup immediately wished that he had not chosen that particular bit of evidence. There was no taking it back, though, and the best that he could do was not mention that this had been going on at the dinner table, while Stoick had actually been present.

“Look, trust me,” Hiccup said instead. “There was no misconstruing, no misinterpreting, and certainly no misunderstanding. Dagur definitely meant what he meant, and he wasn’t listening when I said no, until I said that I was married,” he spread his hands, “and actually managed to get away. So please, if you have a suggestion of how to get me out of this, I’m dying to hear it, because Dagur is not exactly a listening person in any circumstances.”

The fact that Stoick looked lost for words was not a particularly good sign, but it did make Hiccup feel at least a little bit vindicated. “We need to address this as soon as possible,” he said, after what felt like an uncomfortably long pause. “I will go over now, talk to Dagur, and explain–”

“Explain what, Stoick?” said Gobber. “That Hiccup was lying because Dagur was behaving inappropriately? Good luck with ‘the Deranged’ one.”

“Then what?” Stoick said, just a shade away from snapping. “The longer we leave it, the worse it gets.”

“Or we find a wife,” said Gobber, with a wave in Hiccup’s direction.

This time, it was to Hiccup that Stoick looked, confusion creeping in with the anger there. Then he, too, spoke slowly. “Someone to play the role until the Berserkers have left.”

“Are we seriously talking about this?” said Hiccup.

“It wasn’t us who started it,” said Gobber with a pointed look.

It wasn’t as if it could have been called a plan, Hiccup wanted to say, but something told him that was rather irrelevant right now. “No, technically that was Dagur.”

“Hiccup, I know as well as you do that Dagur is difficult to deal with,” said Stoick; Hiccup could not resist a dubious look at that, either. Stoick had never been left alone with Dagur for long periods of time, and before now Dagur had not been foolish enough to go up against Stoick as well. “What you have done, what you have said, was not smart, and now we have to deal with the consequences of it.”

“Again with the consequences talk,” Hiccup muttered to himself. He considered pointing out that this time, he was trying to protect his own virtue.

Stoick either did not hear, or ignored him. “We have two options. One is for me to go and talk to Dagur immediately and explain why you said what you said. The other is to find someone, most likely one of those friends of yours, to be willing to pretend to be married to you.”

“Well, we could always emulate Thor and put Snotlout in a dress...”

“Hiccup,” said Stoick, with more warning in his tone.

The only good thing about the situation right now was that he did not have one of his headaches from a few moons ago, although it didn’t feel like he was all that far off. “You’re serious,” said Hiccup. “You’re actually going to let me do this.”

“Either we tell the Berserkers that we’ve lied to them, or we continue to lie to them and trust that they don’t catch us out,” said Stoick. “Dagur and his men will not be talking to anyone until tomorrow. I can see to it that they only talk to people that I would trust to play along. But after this is over and the treaty is signed,” he added, brows furrowing, “we will be having a very serious talk about this.”

“One minute, Dagur’s talking about trained Skrills, the next he’s trying to proposition me,” said Hiccup. “In what way _can_ I react to that?”

“One of your friends would be the best bet,” said Gobber, before Stoick could even respond. “They already know you best, and if you’re going to pretend to be married, you’re going to end up spending a lot of time with them. Goodness knows you lot do that anyway. What about Astrid?”

“I’m not asking Astrid to marry me!” Hiccup exclaimed, then caught himself. “That... came out wrong. And if you even suggest Ruffnut...” he added, with a warning finger.

“Are you determined to put Snotlout in a dress, then?” said Gobber.

Groaning, Hiccup reached up to rub his forehead. Astrid was probably the least terrible option, and on the bright side she also disliked Dagur already. “Let me figure out how I can phrase this,” he said.

“Or there’s always one other option,” said Gobber mildly.

Hiccup dropped his hand and looked up wearily, wondering mostly-idly if he had done something to particularly anger some god or another. It took him a moment to follow Gobber’s line of sight to see Elsa appearing at the doorway of her room, looking surprised to see Hiccup cornered on the stairs by both Stoick and Gobber.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

Hiccup was already speaking over her. “Oh, no. Absolutely not. You can’t ask Elsa to do that.”

“You’re not being the greatest amount of help, you know,” said Gobber.

“Ask me to do what?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Hiccup quickly. “It’s not happening.”

“What exactly did you tell Dagur about your supposed ‘wife’?” said Stoick. “Did you say that she was a Berk girl?”

“I didn’t – I didn’t say anything specific. I just said that it was a whirlwind romance. That was enough to stop him.”

“And how are you supposed to have had a whirlwind romance with a girl you’ve grown up with?” said Gobber. He had the audacity to use his hook to pick at his teeth, all while holding Hiccup’s gaze. It was nigh impossible to glare effectively at a man who had helped teach you how to walk. “Besides their accents, Dagur might well remember any of the local lasses.”

It had taken Dagur several years to even bother learning Hiccup’s name, but Hiccup did not have the time to point that out. “Wife?” said Elsa.

She knew what that word meant, all right; it had come up early on in her days in Berk, when Hiccup had been trying to talk about the different members of the village. “Hiccup has taken it upon himself,” said Stoick, as if it had been some sort of whim and not the desperate blurting that it had actually been, “to tell the new chief of the Berserker tribe that he is married.”

Elsa gave him a questioning look. Hiccup stood on his tiptoes to look over Gobber’s head. “Unholy wildling charms,” he said simply.

At least he managed to get those words in edgeways, his father looking at him questioningly, but Gobber pushed ahead. “It would only be for a couple of days, but we’re having trouble finding a candidate he’ll accept. Do you have any ideas?”

“Gobber,” he said. It was all very well to produce new words for Elsa to learn, but throwing that many out at once would be unfair at the best of times. And this ridiculous moment was certainly not that. “This isn’t time for fooling around.”

“No, it certainly is not,” said Stoick, voice hard enough for Hiccup to wince.

“All right, _all right_ ,” Hiccup said finally. “Can I at least talk to Elsa about this? Instead of you two doing some sort of two-way interrogation?”

He shouldered between the two of them and made his way over to the nearest bench, dropping down onto it and looking around pointedly. Stoick and Gobber exchanged a glance, then Stoick nodded to the front door and, with a sigh, Gobber started towards it.

“Very well,” said Stoick. “You can explain the situation, but frankly it seems that we have no better solution than this right now.” And there it was, that old disappointed tone of voice. Hiccup should have been used to it by now, but it still stung to hear it after so long free from its shadow. “You and I will have a long talk about this, _once_ the Berserkers have left. Now, Gobber and I are going to go on one last evening patrol.”

And, no doubt, Stoick was going to take the opportunity to vent some of his own frustrations about the situation Hiccup was now in. Gobber’s presence had helped to diffuse more than a few arguments over the years, on the occasions that Hiccup had actually dared to stand up to his father and even become angry enough to try to shout back. He didn’t have particular skills in that area, anyway.

Without anything further, Stoick picked up his heavy fur cloak, draped it around his shoulders, and left. The door slammed in its frame as he closed it.

“I am sorry,” said Elsa, still watching the door warily. Her hands drifted up to her chest again, one rubbing at the wrist of the other. “I did not mean to upset them.”

“Trust me, nothing of what has happened tonight is your fault,” Hiccup replied. “And it was not you that upset them.”

After the amount of walking he had already done that day, the stump of his leg was starting to feel sore, and Hiccup propped his left foot on his right knee to unbuckle his prosthetic. The last thing that he needed was for it to be bad when he was walking out to the cove and back again tonight. Besides, it was only once his attention was split that Elsa actually walked over to him, sitting down on the bench just a little further away than was really necessary.

“What happened?” she said, after a moment.

“Well, you saw Dagur. He’s... not always the nicest of guys,” said Hiccup, wondering how large an understatement could get. “He’s also very used to getting what he wants. And tonight, when we were talking alone, he started trying to...” He was not sure how he could wrap words around it without making it sound like more of a horror than it had felt. Because it had been awkward, certainly, and Dagur had been intimidating, but Hiccup had known Dagur for long enough to know that he had probably been aiming for confident and simply missing by a mile.

“I think I understand,” Elsa said darkly. “I heard of such, while in Kiirkylla.”

Hiccup winced. “Anyway,” he said. “When I said no, he thought that I was being coy. So instead, I...” removing his prosthetic, he made a vague circling gesture with it. “I told him that I was married.”

“Did it work?”

“Well, it stopped him from asking what he was asking, so it was in that way. But lying to the Berserker chief is not exactly the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”

“He will be angry, if he knows.”

“Probably outright Deranged,” muttered Hiccup. He set down his foot and started massaging his stump through his socks. At least it didn’t get as wet as his foot did when the weather was bad. Seeing Elsa’s frown, he nodded. “Yes. He’ll be angry. I probably shouldn’t have said it, but it was the only thing I could think of at the time.”

“I will help you,” she said.

“I don’t want you doing this because you feel like you have to,” said Hiccup. Elsa was giving him a very faint smile that managed to express complete _trust_ in him, and perhaps that was even more frightening than the thought of Dagur getting angry. “This is a really – and I mean _really_ – huge favour for me to ask.”

He had to hide his astonishment when Elsa reached out to put her hand over his. It was very gentle, barely a touch and certainly not a squeeze, but he was not sure that she had ever been the one to do it before. “You are my friend.” A pause, and her smile twitched slightly. “You can owe me a pie.”

It was enough to make him chuckle. “Thank you. We should really get our story straight before we see him tomorrow. I need to go to the cove now, though. The dragons need to eat.” Reluctantly drawing his hand away from hers, he put his foot back on once again.

“I will come with you,” said Elsa.

First Astrid, and now Elsa. One of these days, Hiccup hoped that he would actually be trusted to walk in a straight line without someone accompanying him. On the other hand, he supposed that he had become quite used to having other people around over the last few months. It still felt strange not to look over his shoulder and see Toothless there. “Thank you,” he said. “I mean it. Come on, I need to get another set of clothes so I can change after we’ve gone fishing. Don’t want to freeze solid before I even get home again.”

 

 

 

 

 

With spare clothes and his cane back in his possession, and the night dark around them, they set off towards the cove. Hiccup had already warned Stoick that it would be needed, and hoped now that his father would actually remember and not presume that Hiccup had run away just to get away from this entire ridiculous situation. The walk to the cove was at least quicker when he had someone to talk to along the way, and the idea of a fake marriage became more ridiculous but also close to amusing as they tried to build the bones of the story which they could tell Dagur.

“All right, all right,” said Hiccup, as they ducked into the narrow passageway to the cove itself. “So, after the Red Death, and the seas becoming passable, your island – Maruloet – sent an emissary boat to Berk to find out what had happened. You spoke a bit of Northur, so – ow!” he caught his head on a bit of rock and had to duck a little lower. “So you were the one who did most of the speaking to me, and,” he reached the end of the passage and straightened up. “Were we married before Snoggletog or after? I swear my memory’s getting better, but–”

“Married?” said Astrid.

Hiccup looked round, and nearly fell down the rock between his surprise and Elsa nearly walking into the back of him. Scrambling to catch his balance, he saw Astrid standing at the foot of the rocks with her axe in her hand, a fire merrily burning at the entrance of one of the caves behind her.

“Astrid?” he said.

“I think my question needs more of an answer,” she said, though she did at least lower the axe.

Well, he supposed that his question was at least self-evident. He half-slid, half-jumped down the rock, catching himself as his feet immediately sank down into the snow. “Yes, you did hear me correctly,” Hiccup said with a sigh, as Elsa slid down more carefully behind him. “It’s rather a long story.”

“And one which I am dying to hear,” said Astrid, looking Hiccup up and down.

There was a rumble from behind her, and then Toothless bounded out of the caves, running across the cove and skidding to a halt sharply enough to spray snow all over Hiccup. Hiccup barely had time to splutter it away before Toothless, rumbling deep in his chest, leant in to butt against Hiccup’s chest and then raise his head to look eye-to-eye.

“You’d think that I’d been gone for weeks, not a few hours,” said Hiccup, cupping Toothless’s jaw.

Astrid looked over at Elsa. “And there goes his attention again. Who is he talking about having married?”

“Me,” said Elsa mildly.

“All right, you’re telling me what this about, or I’m not telling you where I put Toothless’s tail,” Astrid said. She hefted her axe over her shoulder and put the other hand on her hip, curled into a fist.

There wasn’t really going to be any way out of this. Leaning one elbow on Toothless’s shoulder and letting the other scratch beneath his chin, Hiccup braced himself. “I may have told Dagur that I’m married, in order to get him to... stop making certain suggestions. And as a result, Elsa and I are going to be spending the next couple of days pretending to be married, so that the Berserkers do not realise that I have been lying to their chief.”

For a moment, Astrid just stared at him, disbelief written across her face. Then she laughed, put her hand to her mouth to cover a snort, and finally gave up and cracked up laughing completely, the sound echoing around the cove.

“Why, thank you for your supportive and mature behaviour,” said Hiccup flatly.

“You–” another gale of laughter overtook Astrid, and she actually doubled over for a moment, free hand across her stomach. “You told Dagur you were _married_?”

“It got him to stop!”

“So would a knee to the crotch, I have no doubt!” she retorted.

Hiccup shifted a little more of his bodyweight to Toothless, wishing more and more that he could be up in the air rather than on the ground and dealing with this. “Well, I was trying to avoid assaulting the Chieftain of a tribe with whom we are supposed to be renewing a treaty in the next few days,” he said.

A year ago, he would have been more forthright in telling Dagur what he could do with his suggestions, but that had been when Osvald had been around to keep Dagur in check. This year, there was a little bit more to worry about than a tantrum if Dagur was denied something that he wanted.

“And is there any reason in particular that Elsa ended up being playing the part of your wife?” said Astrid, voice still shaking slightly and expression wobbling dangerously close to laughter.

“Well, I considered asking Snotlout, but we are a bit too closely related for that,” he said. “Why? Did you want to marry me, Astrid?”

For a moment, Astrid looked stunned to silence, then she gave another snigger. “I don’t think I could keep a straight face.”

“And that would be why I’m pretending to marry Elsa,” said Hiccup, with a flourish of his hand. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind telling me what you’ve done with Toothless’s tail, as your threat strongly implied that you’ve moved it somewhere, we need to go and get some dinner before the night is done, and what are you even doing out here?”

“Came to keep an eye on the dragons,” said Astrid simply, turning back towards the fire and the caves. Taking at as an invitation to follow, Hiccup gave Toothless a nudge in that direction and picked his way down the trail that all of their footprints had left earlier. “I didn’t want someone else stumbling into the cove, for the dragons’ sake or the human’s.”

That was unlikely to mean Berkians, of course, but they still knew so little about the Wildlings that Hiccup could appreciate the wariness. Stormfly was lying in the entrance to one of the caves, and lifted her head as they approached, looking them over and yawning hugely. She lifted one wing to reveal the Nadder hatchlings, who almost fell over themselves as they jumped to their feet and ran or flew over to Hiccup, chirping along the way.

He dropped to one knee as they reached him, trying to rub as many heads as possible at the same time. “Hey there, guys. Have you been behaving yourselves for Astrid?”

“Well, I don’t have a bed to climb on out here, so that hasn’t been an option for them,” said Astrid.  “It took two nights for my father to banish them to the woodshed with Stormfly on a permanent basis.”

And if Stormfly herself and the Terror were anything to go by, Carr was the one who had more of a soft spot for the dragons that Hiccup kept managing to get the family to take in. “Has the Terror finally earnt itself a name yet?” he said, as they reached the fireplace.

Astrid paused and gave him a look which let him know that the information was to go absolutely no further than the cove. “Smokey,” she said. Hiccup felt his lips twitching as she pointed a finger at him. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Wasn’t going to say a word,” he said, voice just about steady despite the laughter he could feel bubbling in his chest.

She went into one of the larger caves, stepping around Stormfly, and retrieved Toothless’s saddle and tail, still wrapped up together. “The hatchlings kept playing with it,” she said by way of explanation, depositing it into Hiccup’s arms as he straightened up. “They went completely mad around nightfall, acting like...” she waved a hand.

“Kids?” suggested Hiccup. Astrid sighed, but did not correct him, which was probably as close to agreement as he was going to get. “Come on, bud, let’s get this back on you. I need some time in the air after today.”

“And I can help Elsa plan your fictional wedding,” said Astrid, with a wicked look.

Hiccup exchanged a glance with Toothless. “Come on, bud. Let’s leave them to it.”

 

 

 

 

 

Being in the air was a relief. It was not as if it was the time itself without flying – it had been less than a day, after all, when after the Red Death he had not been flying for over a moon – but putting up with Dagur had only really been made easier by the knowledge that he would be able to get into the air tonight. Winter was still trying to hold on, the cold so sharp that it stung Hiccup’s eyes and made him press low to Toothless’s back as they took to the air, the other adult dragons following them.

It was a good thing that the cove was towards the west of the island already. Keeping them low, where there was no risk of a watchful Berserker seeing them even in the distance, Hiccup had to hold Toothless back as they made their way out to sea all over again. What had seemed adventurous and entertaining in autumn was looking like less of a brilliant idea in the spring, but the dragons had to eat, and there wasn’t really any way that they could get barrels of food to them out in the cove. And flying around looking for wild boar was only more likely to get their attention.

“Come on, Hookfang, do your thing,” said Hiccup, with a wave of his arm. Keeping the Nightmares calm enough to not flare up was another thing weighing on his mind. “Find us some of those fish.”

Toothless gave a muted rumble, and Hookfang looked across at them both before furling his wings and plunging down beneath the water’s surface. Hiccup tensed against Toothless doing the same thing, but the Night Fury did not so much as jerk in the air, keeping the same smooth, steady pace. If he peered down, he could just about see Hookfang’s shadowy form breaking the surface of the water for a moment before plunging back down again.

It did not take long for Hookfang to burst fully into the air again, chomping down on fish and sending scales and guts showering down through the air around him. “Charming,” said Hiccup dryly, but the other dragons started down towards the surface as well, some of them with low rumbling sounds.

Toothless, though, hung back, and tilted his head to look over his shoulder. He chuffed gently, the sound barely audible but rumbling down through his body and into Hiccup’s.

“Go on, bud,” he said. “You need to eat as well.”

It wasn’t as if a soaking was going to kill him, and frankly he was willing to risk catching a cold just this once. He and Toothless had occasionally flown out with the others when they went to eat, but Toothless had never dropped below the surface and fished with the rest of them. There was always a basket – or occasionally a barrel – of fish waiting for him back home.

With a flick of his foot, Hiccup shifted the tail, and Toothless dropped down towards the surface of the water. At the last moment, though, he pulled up, with spray flicking against them and his wings beating hard to keep them steady, and Hiccup scrambled to change the tail position so that they could hover once again.

“Hey, bud! What are you doing?” Concern bubbled in him. Why Toothless would not want to eat with the others, Hiccup could not guess, and he ran a hand over Toothless’s neck. “Come on. We’ve got to get some food in you.”

With a flap of his ears, Toothless rumbled again, then with a subtle twitch of his wings and tail dropped down a few feet more, dipping his head so that his mouth just skimmed the surface. The spray of water around him soaked through Hiccup’s leggings in seconds and dribbled icily into his boot, but the old cloak he had dragged out was still enough to keep most of it away from his chest.

Toothless’s jaw worked as he snapped up a fish here, a fish there, dropping his head all the way beneath the surface for a moment. Then, with one straining beat of his wings, he pulled them up again, high enough that he could beat properly without the ends of his wings hitting the water.

It finally sunk in, and Hiccup laughed softly, pressing both hands just over Toothless’s shoulders. “You don’t want to get me wet.”

His throat tightened, and even out here, where it was just them and the other dragons, he could not find the words to thank Toothless for that. After a cold winter – far from their hardest, and there had not been any deaths among the smallest children this year, but not mild even by Berkian standards – the chill had soaked into the sea and the people both, and Hiccup had been far from looking forwards to a dip. And, it seemed, Toothless had realised.

Hiccup bent down, even though it meant getting salt spray in his face, until just for a moment he could rest his forehead against Toothless’s back. It was warm but slick with salt water, and perhaps not as tender as it should have been as a form of thanks.

Straightening up, he let Toothless dip in and out of the water a few more times, usually coming up with at least one more fish to his name. Or, Hiccup supposed, to his dinner. By then, Hiccup’s teeth were starting to chatter, and he wrapped his hands tightly around the edge of the saddle to prevent himself from losing his grip. It seemed to be a very long time before Toothless pulled up into the air again, roaring low enough that the sound would hopefully be lost among the waves and not carry back to Berk, a far-off gleam of fire on the horizon.

The others followed them back into the air, and with the cold wind picking up around them Hiccup turned them back towards the island, and the cove, once again. The peace of flying, and of watching the dragons eat in their own natural, perfect, way made things seem a very long way off, and if Hiccup could have stayed in the air until Dagur was gone it would have been very tempting indeed. That was not fair on his father, though, or anyone else in Berk.

Besides, the weather was too bad at this time of year anyway.

He let Toothless get ahead of the others on the way back, although he could feel that Toothless was still barely scratching the surface of what he could do, straining to fly faster and further and outstrip anything that the others could do. Silently, Hiccup promised that after all this would done, they would go on a flight as long and fast as Toothless wanted, cold fingers be damned. With any luck, the treaty could be sorted tomorrow while the Berserkers restocked their water, and they would be gone the morning after on the early tide. That should be not long after dawn, and Hiccup offered silent thanks to Ægir for the tides being in his favour this time around.

Elsa and Astrid were standing by the fire when he got back, and his first instinct was to look for some new braid on Elsa as the result of Astrid’s bored fingers. Instead, though, both of the women were holding knives, and a shield had been propped up at about head-height on the rock wall of the cove. There was already a knife stuck in it, and another one on the ground beneath.

“Is there a throwing weapon you haven’t introduced Elsa to, yet?” he said with a smile to Astrid, sliding out of the saddle carefully as his cold, sore legs complained about their treatment this night.

“I was holding off on throwing spears,” she replied. Her voice was so level that Hiccup was honestly not sure whether she was joking or not. He considered asking for a moment, and had just decided that he did not want to know when Astrid smirked and shifted her weight to one leg, cocking her hip. “Besides, Thawfest is on its way. Got to step up our game to take on Lars and his lot this year.”

Thawfest was only a couple of moons away now, the Berkian games to celebrate the equinox and the sun finally taking over from the darkness for the year. Last year, Hiccup and his friends – though he had not called them his friends then, of course – had been the oldest in their age group, and it had really only been Astrid and Snotlout vying to win. This year, they would be the youngest of the first adult group, but somehow he did not get the feeling that Astrid was going to let that stop her from competing.

“You do that,” said Hiccup. He paused on his way to his spare clothes to wave at his left leg. “Don’t think I’m up to too much this year.”

In some ways, it would be a relief. No more losing soundly at wrestling or the strength contests, even if older competitors would be less embarrassing than the younger ones who had knocked him out last year. He could hold out a little longer when swordfighting, mostly by dodging the blows, and could hold his own in the archery, but Thawfest had always been one of the times of year when he felt like the worst of embarrassments to his father.

As if reading his mind, Astrid raised her voice to call after him as he scooped up his change of clothes and ducked into one of the caves. “I’m sure you could get a solid stance for the archery, still. Or the slings.”

It was not as cold as he had feared, inside the cave; the female Nightmare had padded in ahead of him and settled down at the back, promptly regurgitating a pile of fish for her hatchlings to run over to with happy chirps. Hiccup could handle the smell of fish if it came with the warmth of dragon. “Yes, certainly,” he called back, leaning against the wall to shuck off his boot and change his leggings as quickly as possible. “And I can use it as my weapon of choice in the hand-to-hand combat. Hand-to-foot combat?”

Astrid made a derisive sound, then there was the solid sound of a knife sticking in the wood of the shield. Shaking his head, Hiccup pulled on the dry leggings and started towelling his foot dry. Another grand Berkian skill had always been changing out of wet clothes as quickly as possible, although usually that was not done in caves and surrounded by dragons.

He heard another knife, then Astrid grunted approvingly. “Not bad. You sure you’ve never thrown anything other than a rock before?”

“I am sure,” said Elsa, some embarrassment in her tone.

“Well, if you want in on this for Thawfest, I think you’ve got a chance,” said Astrid. “And the staff-fighting. Most people don’t put much work into that, concentrate on the axes.”

“Thank you,” Elsa replied diplomatically, “but I do not think that I understand ‘Thawfest’. It would probably be better for me to... not.”

Foregoing changing his shirt or vest, which had stayed dry enough beneath his cloak, Hiccup went to bundle up the rest of his clothes and rejoin the conversation. Hopefully it was not too late to find out exactly what Astrid had even said. It might have been easier, however, had Skyfire not swooped in, grabbed his sock, and flitted into the night with a triumphant chuff.

“No! Bring that back! Skyfire!” Hiccup tried to run out of the cave in pursuit, but his left foot slipped in the snow and he nearly went tumbling over instead. He got his balance again and narrowed his eyes at Skyfire, visible in the moonlight above the lake with Hiccup’s sock dangling from the corner of their mouth. “Well, thank you. That just about makes my day. Groped by Dagur, talk my way into a fake marriage, dunked in the sea, and now a dragon steals my sock.”

It sounded like one of Trader Johann’s tall tales when he strung it all together like that, but Hiccup had spent more than enough time over the past few months marvelling at how this had become his life.

“Don’t worry,” said Astrid, “I’ll retrieve it when they come into sleep. Can’t be worse than the Nadders stealing anything shiny in the house and talking it to Stormfly.”

He shot her a questioning look.

“Seriously, anything,” she said. “Buckles, knives, buttons. I caught one of them trying to drag a longsword across the floor.”

“I’m guessing that played into your father’s decision.”

“How could you tell?”

He crossed to Toothless and set about unbuckling his saddle again, for all that Toothless gave him a piteous look over his shoulder. It had to be calculated; nothing that could be called the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself could have that sort of wide-eyed, innocent expression naturally. “Another day and a half, bud,” he said, but honestly made him add at a mutter: “Hopefully.”

“Go on,” said Astrid, holding out an arm for the saddle and tail. Reluctantly, Hiccup passed it over to her. “You and Mrs. Haddock need to head home.”

He looked her in the eyes. “Some days, I hate you.”

“As long as I rank above Snotlout, I can work with it.”


	29. Chapter 29

It probably should not have surprised Hiccup that even if Stoick and Gobber were onboard with the nonsense of him pretending to be married to Elsa, it would not go down well when he pointed out that his supposed wife should probably not be sleeping in the workshop on a different storey of the house from him. After a painful, and distinctly embarrassing, argument, Stoick finally relented to one of them sleeping on the floor of the room, and the other in the bed. Despite knowing that Elsa had spent more time out of beds than in them in her life – perhaps, truth be told, because of it – Hiccup immediately said that he was having the floor, and got Gobber to help him move Elsa’s things upstairs for the sake of two days.

Hiccup made himself up a bed on the slate on which Toothless normally lay, which if not exactly level with his bed was at least more comfortable than he might have expected. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine that Toothless was still nearby; he fell asleep quickly, and dreamt of flying.

He awoke to the sound of a slamming door, or possibly just the grandiose call of: “Good morning, Hiccup! Good morning, Stoick!” that Dagur boomed in its wake.

For an instant, he felt vindicated. Dagur had been barging in wherever he so wished for years, and the Haddock house had never been any different – Stoick had just usually been with Osvald when this was taking place. The next thing that Hiccup heard, though, was the distinctive creak of the lowest step, and a moment of absolute panic washed over him.

Elsa was in the bed, but Hiccup very much was not. This did not exactly look married.

He rolled out of his makeshift bed, gathered up his blankets and pillow into one bundle, and launched them vaguely behind his actual bed. They fell in a messy heap, but it was at least better than nothing. Without his foot on, it was going to be a lot easier to get to the bed and sit on the edge of it than to get the top of the stairs and head Dagur off, and with Stoick’s demand to know what was going on Hiccup simply could not hear whether Dagur was still climbing.

No choice. Hiccup launched himself at his bed, misjudging the distance and colliding with Elsa who still lay in it. She gave a stifled yelp and whipped over as he skidded, scrambling to get a hold of the edge so that he could sit up and pull the top blanket over himself in something that might look like a natural waking-up position.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” he hissed, trying to grab a hold of the bed. It was a bit hard to tell in the confusion as Elsa shifted as well, but he might have grabbed her instead.

A hand slammed into his throat. With a choking sound, Hiccup found himself being forced down onto his back on the bed again, Elsa looming over him with bared teeth and wide eyes, weight settling across his hips to pin him to the bed. He froze, hands half-raised in surrender, as Elsa’s eyes properly focused on him and she drew back a little, terror and anger leaving her face. Her right hand was on his throat, left one raised between them and palm outstretched warningly, frost glinting beneath her nails despite the trollwort bracelet she still wore.

She parted her lips to speak, when there was another creaking sound, and Hiccup looked sideways to see Dagur at the top of the stairs, an expression of complete and unbridled astonishment written across his face. The silence swelled to fill the space between them to an almost suffocating extent, then Dagur smiled dangerously.

“I do apologise,” he said. “I didn’t realise that I was interrupting. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

He turned around and vanished back down the steps, cheerily greeting Stoick along the way. From the growl in his voice, Stoick was not quite so pleased with matters.

It took Hiccup a moment to realise just what Dagur had seen. Hiccup was lying on his back with Elsa straddling him, both of them still in their nightclothes and, indeed, in bed. At that point, the fact that Elsa had one hand on Hiccup’s throat was probably just an afterthought. Hiccup let his hands dropped to his face. “If you could just put me out of my misery now,” he said, voice muffled, “I would deeply appreciate it.”

“Take all the time you need, Hiccup!” called Dagur.

If death by embarrassment was possible, Hiccup was pretty sure that he would have just dropped dead on the spot. As it was, he merely pressed his head further back into the pillow, and was vaguely relieved that Elsa at least took her hand off his neck.

“Is there, ah, any chance that you could get off me, please?” he said finally. Elsa blinked at him, shifting her weight back onto her heels as she lifted her hands to her chest and clasped them around each other, then she looked down at where she was sitting on him and hastily scrambled aside.

“I am sorry,” she breathed. Her left hand was still pressed hard against her chest, wrapped into a tight fist, and he realised that she was shaking. “I am sorry, I am sorry–”

“Hey!” said Hiccup, though he kept it quiet enough that it would not carry downstairs. He went to put a hand on her shoulder, but she turned away, sitting on the edge of the bed and angling her shoulders away from him. “Elsa, I startled you. Probably shouldn’t have jumped on you.” He caught the words. “That came out wrong.”

She did not seem to have noticed, eyes still fixed on the stairs.

“Yeah, Dagur can be... Dagur,” said Hiccup. There were words, but it was a bit too early in the morning for them. “Don’t worry, I’ll stretch out the tour for as long as possible, keep him away. You might have to be there for the feast, but I’ll try to get Dagur on the far side of my father.” At the very least, Hiccup resolved, he would put himself between Elsa and Dagur. Perhaps it would make up a bit for putting Elsa between himself and Dagur when it came to this marriage nonsense. Not sure how reassuring he was sounding, he waved in the direction of where he had been sleeping. “Could you pass me my foot, please?”

It seemed to snap Elsa out of her thoughts, and she nodded sharply before getting to her feet. Hiccup rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, still pushing away the last scraps of sleep, as Elsa retrieved the metal foot and handed it back to him.

“Thank you.” It wasn’t until he started thinking about putting his foot on that he actually realised how sore his stump was from going back and forth to the cove the day before. Grimacing, Hiccup opted for an extra layer of sock again. “My father will have to be with Dagur as well, and probably Gobber. If you want to stay here that’s fine, or you can head round to Astrid’s. No,” he said, thinking of the cove again. “Fishlegs’s would probably be better.” Heaven only knew how they would end up spending a day, though Hiccup was fairly sure that it would not involve hair, and probably not throwing weapons either.

“Thank you,” said Elsa again. She had at least met Fishlegs’s younger sisters over the last moons, Hiccup knew, as the younger girls still wanted to spend as much time as they could with Meatlug’s hatchlings even as the hatchlings themselves grew more independent. Or maybe they were getting beyond the _hatchling_ stage now.

She crossed to the clothes-chest that had been bought upstairs for her, and Hiccup hastily turned round so that he had his back to her, facing towards the stairs instead. At least he could hear Dagur talking downstairs, and Stoick’s unimpressed-sounded replies.

“Is it all right...” Elsa trailed off.

Hiccup waved a hand in her general direction. “Go ahead. I’ll tackle my hair.”

The only reason that he would not call his hair his most uncontrollable body part was that his left foot was now in the running for that somewhat questionable honour. Hiccup grabbed his comb and set about attempting to get his hair into something like order, not convinced that he was managing much as he heard Elsa wrestling with fabric behind him. He rolled his shoulders, but had to admit that he was less stiff than sleeping on a rock would have made him fear.

“I am dressed,” said Elsa, and Hiccup looked round with a hopeful smile to see that she was looking a little more composed, at least. She was wearing the plain black dress that she had made herself at Snoggletog, without the apron or brooch that had accompanied it at the time. That was good, Hiccup had to admit; the apron had been a little too Arendelle to avoid risking Dagur’s suspicion, and the brooch was obviously disallowed for the same reason that Hiccup’s new vest had been. She came down and sat down beside him, more heavily than he was used to from her.

“It’ll be all right today,” he said. “I’ll keep Dagur busy on the tour.”

“Your cousins, they still do not know,” said Elsa. For a moment, he thought that she was going to be upset by that, but instead she took a deep breath and seemed heartened by it. “This is only a day, yes?”

“Yes,” he replied. He did not add that he was still not happy with that, still not sure what Elsa felt on the matter. Or whether Elsa was sure what Elsa felt on the matter. “Go on,” he nodded to the stairs. “I’ll meet you down there.”

She cocked her head slightly. “Married?”

Hiccup managed not to groan aloud, but did close his eyes and shake his head at himself. “Damn Dagur,” he went for instead, and Elsa huffed agreement. He levered himself to his feet, limped for a couple of steps before catching himself and evening out his pace. His good vest was still out of the question today, just when he wanted it the most, but he pulled on another shirt and pair of leggings that were not showing too much sign that he had been spending a lot of the last few months wrestling with dragons of various sizes. His old fur vest felt strange on his shoulders, but the day was at least feeling warm enough that he would not need a cloak over the top.

Despite his fingers feeling suspiciously like thumbs as he tried to dress as quickly as possible, he got himself presentable, and almost picked up his cane before clenching his fist firmly and heading downstairs instead. From the corner of his eye, he saw Elsa following.

Both Stoick and Gobber were already up and about, probably having scrambled clothes on while Dagur was still making his way up and down the stairs. Gobber was coaxing some heat from the fire and keeping a careful eye on Dagur, who was leaning against the table making airy gestures with a half-eaten crabapple.

“So I said to my father...” Dagur trailed off as he caught sight of Hiccup. Something that might have been disappointment crossed his features. “Ah, good morning again, Hiccup.”

“Good morning, Dagur,” he said, with as much dignity as he could muster. At least his nightgown had been fairly new, and not particularly see-through. “I trust that you slept well.”

“I’ve slept worse,” said Dagur dismissively. “And you? How was your night?”

He took another bite of his apple, all without his eyes leaving Hiccup’s. It was far more uncomfortable than it had any right to be. “Great, thank you,” said Hiccup, and regretted it when Dagur raised his eyebrows. “Now, shall we get straight to the tour, then?”

“You didn’t want breakfast?” Of all people, Hiccup would not have expected Dagur to be the one to come out with that, and he didn’t want to linger too long on the implications of why. He was feeling the discomfort of hunger, but was not sure that he could bring himself to eat this morning. “Or have you already eaten?”

Stoick’s face started to redden, and Hiccup wished that he could start this morning afresh and have it be less mortifying along the way. “I’m just – fine, thank you,” he said quickly. “But it really would be good to get an early start on the tour. Don’t want to miss the fishing boats heading out for the day, or half the fleet will be gone before we get down there.”

That at least seemed to get through, and Dagur sighed in an unnecessarily put-upon way before taking another bite out of the crabapple and then chucking what remained over his shoulder and in the vague direction of the fire. It missed, and rolled across the floor. “Very well, then. Let’s see this fishing fleet of yours. Who will be joining us?”

“ _I_ will be leading the tour, Dagur, as Chief of Berk,” said Stoick, still glaring. “And as my heir, Hiccup will be joining us.”

Well, this was just going to be a marvellous day.

“I’ll see you later,” he said to Elsa, taking her hand before she could be startled enough to pull away. He cocked his head to catch her gaze, though she was still frowning.

Her lips barely moved as she murmured. “What did he mean–”

“Ask A–” no, Astrid was resolutely not the answer to this one right now. “Ruffut,” said Hiccup. He reached in to kiss Elsa on the cheek, and though her hand clenched around his she did not flinch.

Hopefully, when this was all over, they were going to have a good long laugh about it. It would be the least that the world could do to make up for this.

 

 

 

 

 

The tour was, surprisingly, less painful than Hiccup had feared. Dagur asked uncomfortably detailed questions about their defence, what damage had been done before and since the Red Death – Stoick was truthful when he said that there had been no attacks since then, though Dagur frowned as if he did not know what to make of such a comment – and about the number of men that they could call to arms, but that was his right per the treaty.

In the years that Stoick went to Berserker Island he would have been equally justified in asking the same questions, but Hiccup doubted that he ever did. He had seen the more leisurely tours that Osvald was content with, comments just as likely to be about a new house or a rebuilt barn as they were to be about the number of catapults. But Dagur looked over everything with the eye of a fighter, not necessarily a chief, not caring about the fishing boats but lingering on their diminished warship numbers, and listing every change in the lower defences as if requiring some sort of justification from Stoick for how much they had been decreased.

Usually, Osvald would get the tour over and done with as quickly as possible, so that he and his men could retire to the Great Hall to swap stories, gamble, and show off their strength in arm wrestling or glíma. By noon, Dagur must have seen almost every house in Berk, and was attempting to persuade Stoick to show him around the traplines that sat in the northernmost stretches of the Wildland. Stoick stood firm, though, repeating that they were not part of the town and thus did not fall under the treaty, while Hiccup leant against a house behind them both and tried to take the weight off his still-aching left leg.

The onset of rain interrupted them, and Dagur finally assented to their return to the main part of the village. Stoick sighed very heavily once Dagur had turned away, and Gobber patted him on the shoulder. Hiccup reminded himself that they had to be over half way through the treaty visit by now.

Usually, by this time of day the Great Hall would be full of Berserkers and Berkians alike talking and joking, sharing exaggerated stories of the last year and treating each other with relative trust at last after so many generations at war. This year, though, two Berserkers stood stiffly at the entrance to the Great Hall, still armoured and helmeted, glaring out as if daring anyone to enter. Inside, a few of the men had paired off and were sparring with swords and shields – and somehow Hiccup doubted that they had bothered bringing practice blades with them – while others sat in tight groups at the tables and talked in undertones, regarding Stoick warily as he entered the room once again.

“Now, Dagur,” said Gobber, who had stayed quiet for most of the tour unless Stoick had been particularly shocked by, and unable to respond to, one of Dagur’s more ridiculously obsessive questions. “How about we break out the mead and you tell us about your glorious rise to power as Chief of the Berserkers, hmm?”

It was not the most subtle attempt to get information that Hiccup had ever heard, but with Dagur that didn’t necessarily mean that it was going to be unsuccessful. “I’ll get some ale,” Hiccup volunteered, veering off towards the barrels even as he spoke.

“I would hardly call my father’s actions _glorious_ ,” said Dagur, with an almost audible curl of his lip. Hiccup almost turned back on his heel again to be sure that Gobber would prevent Stoick from responding to angrily to the slur against the man he considered a friend, but no, he could trust that Gobber would manage that. And, if he were honest, it would be nice to get even a short time away from Dagur.

He retrieved three mugs of ale, paused in consideration, then added a fourth that he could at least keep his hand by and use as an excuse to not talk once in a while. He scooped them onto a tray and wove around the tables of Berserkers back to the top table. Dagur’s men scowled and looked at him suspiciously, more than one table pausing in their dice games to watch him as he went past.

“Lovely,” muttered Hiccup under his breath. It was like going back a year and having everyone watch him for when he was going to mess up something else, only in the meantime he had become used to actually getting looked at like a normal human being.

He slid the tray into place at Dagur’s elbow. Stoick had at least managed to take the top seat this time, but Dagur and Gobber had seated themselves on either side of him and Hiccup had a more than sneaking suspicion that there would be trouble if he did not take the spare seat at Dagur’s side.

“I suppose your wife is normally the one doing this,” said Dagur drily, taking one of the mugs.

For a moment, Hiccup could not find his tongue to respond, then he managed to catch himself and not stare uselessly at Dagur. “Well,” he said, thinking of Slaughter Day, “Elsa is better at keeping hold of food and drink than Snotlout is.”

Dagur frowned at him, then took a sip of the ale. “So, Elsa. Not a Viking name.”

“Well, not a Northur one,” said Hiccup. He carefully climbed onto the bench, putting as much distance as he could between himself and Dagur without looking outright rude. “She’s a Viking now, after all.”

He got a grunt in response, and supposed that it could have been worse. “So, where _is_ she from?”

Behind Dagur, Stoick was looking very wary, and Hiccup wished that there was a way to reassure his father without blowing this whole thing wide open. If he could spend a summer hiding secret meetings with a dragon and a Wildling, he was pretty sure he could manage two days pretending that his friend was actually his wife. “Maruloet,” he said evenly. “After the Red Death, the seas were more passable. Fewer attacks, and less of the fog that used to make navigation difficult. We can now sail west, and islands on the west can... now sail east.”

He faked a sip of the ale, in reality just wetting his lips, and all but watched the cogs turn in Dagur’s head. “And she was one of the visitors?” he said, sounding dubious. “She doesn’t look like much of a fighter.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Hiccup, before he could help it.

Dagur went to drink again, then paused and nodded to himself with a look of consideration.

“Anyway,” Hiccup added quickly, not wanting to think about what Dagur was picturing, “she already spoke some Northur then. And we spent a lot of time together before I had the prosthetic. And like I said...” he waved vaguely with the mug. “Whirlwind. It just sort of... happened. Getting married,” he added, before Dagur could misconstrue anything in turn. This morning had probably been bad enough. “I’m sorry about the lack of invitation. It just... wasn’t the season for sailing, you know? Didn’t want any wrecks on our account.”

“So, are we expecting a new heir any time soon?”

Hiccup froze, brain refusing to provide him with any response. Dagur looked politely interested, and he could not even look at Stoick or Gobber to see what their expressions might be doing. Finally, Hiccup slowly lowered his mug to the table and replied, eyes fixed on Dagur’s eyebrows instead of his eyes themselves. “It wasn’t that sort of whirlwind wedding,” he said stiffly. They had a term for it in Arendelle, weddings forced by the pregnancy of the bride, but Hiccup was not sure how it would translate into Northur.

“Oh,” said Dagur. He took another drink of his ale.

“So,” said Gobber, breaking the almost solid silence over the table, “have you any plans for marriage yourself, Dagur? I’m sure there are eligible women just lining up.”

“I prefer to focus on the martial, not the marital,” said Dagur. Well, at least both of his hands were above the table, Hiccup supposed. “The position of the Berserkers among the Archipelago has slipped during my father’s time. It needs to be rectified. And I intend to be the one to do so.”

“Right,” said Gobber, drawing out the word. “Well, that certainly sounds... thrilling. What do your plans involve?”

“Why?” Dagur narrowed his eyes, slamming his mug down on the table. “Looking to undermine them?”

“As your allies,” said Stoick sharply, “we’d be more inclined to assisting you, wouldn’t we?” He waited until Dagur had stopped glaring in Gobber’s direction and looked round. “Under the terms of our treaty we are at peace, and you can request our assistance if you so desire it.”

Dagur was still scowling. “Believe me, we don’t require your assistance.”

 

 

 

 

 

The conversation continued downhill. Dagur alternately pried into Berk’s defences and refused to talk about Berserker Island’s, with an occasional foray into trying to question Hiccup about Elsa. Hiccup did his best to deflect the questions with a minimum of lying, and Stoick and Gobber between them would wrest the conversation back to the topic of armaments and defences.

“I do find it very strange,” said Dagur, somewhere around his third mug of ale and as the sky outside was darkening, “that there were stories of _Berk_ , of all places, our _allies_ , training dragons.”

“Come now, Dagur,” Gobber said, “you know as well as we do the tales that the likes of Johann can spread. More interesting than real. And I think there would be some signs of dragons if we were training them.” He gestured towards the village.

Dagur had been visible unsure of what to think of the empty arena. Apparently Gobber had found time yesterday to make sure that all the chalk drawings and notes were scrubbed from the walls, and the ropes that had formerly been bridles had been untied and looped up like any other hank. It looked as if they were ready to practice in there once again – except, of course, for the lack of dragons. Gobber had claimed that they had been taking too much fish to keep alive, and had been killed off to be replaced next year, and at the time Dagur had seemed to accept it and dropped the matter of dragons for a while.

“Yes,” said Dagur. “You would think so.”

“Besides,” said Hiccup, “dragons are... wild creatures. Dangerous. I don’t think it would be possible to control one.”

That part, at least, he would stand by. Training was one thing, but Hiccup would never be so arrogant or so foolish as to claim that he ‘controlled’ Toothless.

With a look of consideration, Dagur swirled what was left of his ale in his mug and looked Hiccup over. “Well, I’ve heard that said, but still... sometimes I look at our old Skrill harnesses and wonder.”

Unable to admit that he had absolutely no idea what Dagur was talking about, Hiccup laughed nervously and glanced around the room. His heart leapt into his throat as he saw the door open and Mrs. Ingerman walk in, with Fishlegs and Elsa not all that far behind her. All of them were carrying sacks over their shoulders. Her daughters must have remained at home.

Fishlegs caught sight of Hiccup and waved, and Dagur must have followed Hiccup’s line of sight as he waved back and then gestured them both over. “Come, come!” he called the length of the hall, many of the Berserkers turning to look as he did so. “Join us!”

There was a brief discussion between the three of them, Fishlegs shrugging helplessly, then only Elsa handed her sack over to Fishlegs and peeled away, walking the length of the hall with her head held high despite the eyes of the Berserkers on her. As she drew closer, Hiccup got to his feet and pulled her into a hug, which she accepted without so much surprise this time around. With his back to Dagur, he kissed the air just beside her cheek and caught her eyes in apology before drawing back again.

“Fishlegs says that he is sorry,” she said, “but he must help his mother. They are to cook.”

The slip of her grammar was probably nerves, Hiccup realised, and he ran his hand down her arm to take her hand. “That’s all right. I’m sure that Dagur and his men will be glad of the food, right, Dagur?”

“Early preparations for the feast?” said Dagur.

“Of course,” Stoick said. “Others will be up later to roast the meat, but there are none as good as Mrs. Ingerman for a good stew base.”

With a wide smile, Dagur turned to Elsa as she took a seat on the other side of Hiccup. “So. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Elsa, was it not?”

“Yes,” said Elsa, with a terse nod. “And you are Chief Dagur, yes?”

“Indeed. Dagur the Deranged,” he said, with a tilt of his mug in her direction. “Newly Chief of the Berserker tribe in the place of my,” Dagur’s lip curled slightly, “father.”

“I hope you are enjoying Berk,” she said. Her words were very careful, her accent a little stronger than usual, but at least Hiccup had managed to get himself firmly between her and Dagur.

Dagur paused, considering. “It has not been an unpleasant trip. But there have been... certain surprises.”

“Well, there have been some surprises for us as well,” said Gobber evenly.

“So, Elsa, tell me about yourself,” said Dagur, ignoring both Stoick and Gobber and even turning slightly where he sat. “We haven’t met before, after all, though I’ve known Hiccup for many years.”

Elsa gave Hiccup a glance, and he nodded in encouragement, touching her arm with the tips of his fingers. “I am from Maruloet,” she said, their repeated, almost-comfortable lie. “I have a younger sister, we grow up together. It is not very exciting.” She glanced at the table in what probably looked like shyness, before swallowing and looking to Dagur again. “What about you?”

“Oh, I had an older sister,” Dagur waved a hand, speaking in an entirely unconcerned tone. “She went viking, seems to have vanished. I’m sure she’ll turn up eventually.”

Alarm, edged with disgust, flashed across Elsa’s face before she looked quickly away. Given how strongly Elsa felt about her sister, Hiccup could easily understand why. “Well, I’m sure that Snotlout was disappointed by that,” said Hiccup, picking one of his friends at random. “He was quite looking forward to seeing her. Between you and me,” he lowered his voice just a touch, “I think he has a bit of a crush on her.”

It was complete nonsense, of course, but it at least made Dagur snort disdainfully. “Well, some people have strange taste,” he said. “He’s your... cousin, yes? The skinny one, with the blond hair?”

“Second cousin, yes,” said Hiccup. “But he’s the one with the dark hair and the,” he drew circles in the air beside his head, “horns on his helmet. I’m sure we’ll see him at the feast tonight.”

“So he was the next in line.”

“Actually, that would be Spitelout,” said Hiccup, mentally following the family tree up and over. “Then Snotlout.”

“And you are...” Dagur paused, thinking. “Friends with him? You aren’t concerned about him... betraying you?”

Hiccup probably would not have trusted Snotlout with a bowl of soup, but when it came to being chief he was surprised to realise that he did trust his cousin. Snotlout had occasionally boasted when they were younger about he would make a better chief’s son than Hiccup, but in the Red Death and when it had come to the dragons, Snotlout had not fought with him.

“Considering him a friend is why I’m not concerned about him,” he said. “I trust Snotlout. With my life, actually,” he added, thinking about Dragon Island. It might have been just him and Toothless in the end, but all of the others had still been willing to stand alongside him.

Dagur looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “Indeed.”


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: this chapter contains dragon-on-dragon and human-on-dragon violence.

More Berkians turned up as the evening wore on, many of them bringing along food as they did so. Elsa managed to give an immaculate description of how a Berkian wedding would go, for which Hiccup strongly suspected Astrid was actually to be thanked. Even Dagur’s eyes glazed over slightly as Elsa talked with great precision about her supposed wedding dress, and Hiccup held back the urge to laugh. At least if he was pretending to look adoringly at Elsa, Dagur could not see his face.

Dagur started to perk up as the story rolled towards its end, and Hiccup had a worrying feeling that the words ‘wedding night’ were on the horizon. He scrambled for an alternate topic of conversation, but did not have time to put it forward when a rumbling sound cut through the air and the floor shook beneath them.

“What the...” said Stoick. He got to his feet just as a second tremor ran through the Great Hall, this one more pronounced than the first and makings mugs and knives clatter in place.

Even Dagur looked around. “What _is_ that?” he demanded. “Is this _common_ on Berk?”

If Hiccup pressed his right foot tightly to the ground, he could still feel it, a distant low rumbling. “No,” he said. “We don’t get earthquakes here. I’m going to have a look outside and–”

A roar ripped through the air, unmistakably a dragon but harsher than he had ever heard before. There was a grating quality to it, unfamiliar. Hiccup was out of his seat and running the length of the Great Hall before it had even finished, despite his father shouting after him and the flurry of activity from the Berserkers on either side.

He skidded to a halt in the doorway, narrowly stopping himself from tumbling down the stone steps outside, and scanned the sky above Berk. Even in the darkness there was something there, a hint of movement in the shadows, but just as Hiccup was squinting towards it there was another roar and flame flashed in the sky.

It formed a narrow stream, with rings flaring out around it, and there was an odd, percussive quality to the sound. He could barely see the dragon that formed it; there was a faint impression of a bulbous head, a whipping tail, and then the fire was gone and most of Hiccup’s night vision had gone with it.

“Thor help me,” he muttered to himself. That was not a sort of dragon that he had seen before. More worryingly, it was the first time that dragons other than their own had been seen over Berk since the autumn.

He was grabbed around the shoulder and shaken in place, Dagur whooping with laughter beside him. “A dragon attack! Amazing! We can fight them together!”

“No, no, no,” said Hiccup quickly, then realised to whom he was talking. “It wouldn’t do to endanger yourself on our behalf, Dagur!”

Dagur spun him round so that they were face-to-face, grinning maniacally. “But we’re allies! And that,” he squeezed Hiccup’s shoulders painfully hard, “is what allies do!”

There was a crashing sound, and Hiccup looked round in time to see the dragon disappearing into a hole in the ground, its tail whipping through the air. It felt like so long since Hiccup had read the Book of Dragons, looked at anything other than the dragons that inhabited Berk. There had been so much to learn. But it seemed familiar, the shape, the tunnelling. “Whisper... whispering.” Hiccup pulled back from Dagur’s hold, reaching up to rub his forehead. “Whispering something.”

“Whispering Death,” said Gobber, catching up to them. “Not something we want around here.”

“No. Ready the catapults!” Stoick roared as he reached the doors. He turned to Hiccup, the familiar expression on his stick as he was about to send him home, then the changes since the last attack must have hit him like a wall as he hesitated.

Hiccup grabbed the moment. “I need to go home. Get my things.” He waved vaguely to his hip, where an axe would hang if that were what he meant to get. “Elsa!”

Whether she was following the hubbub or simply did not want to be left by herself in a room that was still more Berserker than Berkian, he was not sure, but she was not far behind them. “Yes?” she said, stepped into better view from behind Gobber.

“Excellent!” said Dagur. “I’ll get my men.”

He disappeared back into the Great Hall, calling to the Berserkers, as the ground beneath them rumbled again. There was a crashing sound in the village, and someone screamed. “Dad,” said Hiccup quickly, “there’s no way you’re going to stop Dagur.”

“They need driving out of the village,” Stoick replied flatly, and in that, Hiccup supposed, he was right. Another of their distinctive roars filled the air, and flames licked up into the night. This time, with a chill, Hiccup realised that there was more than one of the dragons, as he caught sight of a second dragon not far behind the first.

Spitelout sprinted half-way up the steps. “Stoick! Whispering Deaths, three at least.”

“Ready the water-tanks,” Stoick said. “And have the great shields bought out. And remember, minimum foot movement!”

“What?” said Hiccup.

“They haven’t struck here since you were young,” said Gobber, waving for Stoick to go on down the steps. “They hunt from underground – hear your footsteps. So stomping about is not the greatest of plans.”

Which was a pity, because stomping around was a talent that was not particularly lacking on Berk. Hiccup nodded, then waved for Elsa to follow him as he took off down the steps. Last year, he would have been ready to bet that he was one of the more light-footed residents of Berk, but nowadays he wasn’t sure that was a bet that his left foot would want him to take.

At least his house wasn’t exactly far from the Great Hall. He hit the door hard, almost fell over himself on his way up the stairs, and threw open his clothes chest.

“Hiccup?” called Elsa, still downstairs.

“Up here!” He pushed aside his clothes and grabbed the bag of dragon nip securely buried at the bottom. It was the only place in his room that Toothless could not get into in his search for it. He tied it onto his belt beside the Gronckle iron knife, and grabbed his cloak off the bed as he straightened up again. A roar shook the air as he ran back down the stairs again, grabbing himself on the newel to keep his footing, and turned in the direction of the pantry.

“Are you all right?”

“Our dragons used to fight once,” he said. “Now... you see? There’s no reason this one can’t be trained as well.”

Just in case, though, he started searching for the tight-woven basket that they kept out of Toothless’s way these days. Finding it, Hiccup drew out a dried eel, which had already been rolled up and was easy enough to stuff into a pouch and add to his belt. He was going to start needing pockets sooner or later.

This time, fire filled the doorway as one of the dragons roared, and Elsa leapt aside as flames licked at the heavy wood of the floor. It had been singed so many times that Hiccup was not worried about it catching fire, but that did not help the people. “Sorry!” he said, hurrying back over. “Sorry!”

Elsa was breathing hard, but raised a hand to Hiccup. “I am all right,” she said, though she held well back from the door.

“They can take some getting used to,” he said. A figure appeared at the door, and Hiccup was ready to launch them both aside again, but it was only Gobber. “Gobber! How many are there?”

Gobber’s response was to slam the door closed and pin it in place with his weight; fire bloomed around the edges again and he lifted up his wooden foot out of the line of it. As it died down, Gobber straightened his helmet and finally looked round to them. “Might want to go for the back door. Or give it a few minutes. There’s one of them sniffing round the house.”

“I’m going out there,” said Hiccup immediately. He was expecting to be told in no uncertain terms that he was not, but no, that was the last year. This time, Gobber just nodded to the shields on the wall.

“You should take one,” he said. “Won’t be as good as a greatshield, but flames or spines, it could come in handy.”

A greatshield was not exactly in Hiccup’s range of capabilities, and frankly the larger shields were unwieldy on his arm as well. He took down one of the smaller ones, though, with which he had trained, and slung it over his shoulder as Gobber set about swapping his hook for a mace. Outside, his father bellowed, and there was a dragon’s roar that was practically a reply.

“Why are they even here?” he said. “I know it’s the poor season for fishing, but why Berk? There weren’t even many of them on Dragon Island!”

“You’re the dragon expert, you tell me!”

From anyone else, it might have been accusatory, a reminder of how much there still was for Hiccup to learn, but there was no such tone in Gobber’s voice. There might be dragons that Hiccup had not met, but from Toothless onwards he had understood dragons in a way that nobody else had yet quite emulated. It was gratifying, but more than a little daunting.

“I’m working on it,” said Hiccup. He crossed to the front door and listened, but there was still such rumbling and crashing going on outside that he could not be certain what he was hearing. He took a deep breath and opened the door a crack, only for it to be flung open with such force that he was sent staggering back.

Dagur cackled gleefully, sword in one hand and bloodlust in his eyes. “This is fantastic! You have attacks like this all the time? No wonder you learned about dragons!” He grabbed a handful of Hiccup’s tunic and dragged him over. “Come, Hiccup, we shall face them together.”

Doing his best to extricate his shirt from Dagur’s fingers, Hiccup glanced to make sure that there was no dragon waiting just outside the door before looking to Elsa. “Please, stay here. I need to know you’re safe.”

She hesitated, eyes flicking between Hiccup and Dagur, then nodded. “I will stay.”

With a breath of relief that was not in the slightest bit feigned, Hiccup grabbed Dagur’s wrist in return and steered them both out of the house. With Dagur in tow, he would have to act differently, but he knew eels as well as dragonnip and was fairly sure that he could keep dragons away from Dagur as well as himself. How he was going to explain the eel, if Dagur saw it, he was not quite sure, but that was a bridge to cross when they came to it.

Fires were being hastily lit all over town; Hiccup saw the shadow of one of the Whispering Deaths in it, all shining teeth and white eyes, before it turned and whipped away into the darkness. It was hard to tell how many there were, but for a moment Hiccup ignored the hand clutching his tunic and the shouting of Berkians and Berserkers alike. He closed his eyes, and listened for them.

One to the right, low but above the roofline, roaring and breathing fire. One ahead, smashing up and into the air. Two to the left, roaring at slightly different pitches, one further away than the other. And at least one underground, making the very earth beneath their feet rumble and shake. To Hiccup’s surprise, he could feel it more clearly on his left, in the way that his prosthetic felt against his stump. Well, at least there was one advantage to it.

“Five,” he breathed, opening his eyes again. “At least five.”

Dagur was looking at him with something close to awe. “That’s amazing! How can you tell?”

Taking the opportunity to retrieve his shirt, and feel less like he was on the verge of being hoisted into the air, Hiccup took a step back. “Just... paying attention,” he said. It actually managed to come out a little less sarcastic than it had been in his head.

Stoick barked, “Fire!” into the night, and the catapults thudded against the sky. One of the Whispering Deaths howled. Even knowing that they were attacking Berk, Hiccup felt his heart lurch in his chest, but he could only hope that people would remember themselves and aim to drive the dragons away, and not to kill them.

There was a crashing sound, that of splintering wood and stone, and then a human battle-cry followed by a dragon’s call. Hiccup took off running, faintly aware of Dagur behind him, and skidded down the slope and around another house to see Carr Hofferson, battleaxe in hand, tuck himself behind the greatshield being propped up by Sanguina, the youngest of Phlegma’s daughters.

The Whispering Death, blood streaming across one of its eyes, blasted fire down over them. The greatshields were seven foot across, a hinged circle of dragonhide that protected from even the worst of attacks while remaining light enough to carry. As soon as the Whispering Death paused for breath, Carr stepped out again and, with a battlecry that could probably punch through walls by itself, bought the axe down across the Whispering Death’s face.

Blood splattered, but the cut seemed shallow, and the Whispering Death simply roared and lunged at the ground where Carr stood. He flung himself aside, rolling back to his feet again, but the Whispering Death had already disappeared with a snap of its tail.

“Carr!” Hiccup skirted the Whispering Death’s tunnel to reach the Hofferson house. “What happened?”

Breathless, Carr gestured to the woodshed, or at least where it had stood. The timbers had been shattered, some of what remained smouldering, with spines from the Whispering Death’s tail embedded in the wall of the house where it had been.

“Why would they...” Hiccup trailed off. His house. The Hoffersons’ woodshed. They definitely had something in common, which would explain why the barns still stood untouched, sheep safe in their fields. “Fishlegs.”

“What? What are you talking about?” said Dagur.

Hiccup ignored him. The Ingermans’ house was not far away, but there were people running and flames licking the sky and he had to swerve to avoid Silent Sven running grimly through the centre of the town. He heard Dagur cursing behind him. Mrs. Ingerman could raise an axe as well as any Berkian to defend herself, and Fishlegs was better at fighting than he liked to think, but they were not dyed-in-the-wool fighters in the way that some of the other families were.

He cut between two houses, then staggered back as fire blasted down in front of him. Up close, it was searing-hot, worse than the Gronckle or the Zippleback, coming in concentric rings around a tight inner blast. The Whispering Death peeled up again, turned in the sky above them, then plunged down with its jaws open and teeth glittering in the firelight.

Hiccup jumped out into the centre of the area and stood, palm up, facing directly into the wide jaws of the Whispering Death. He wasn’t sure if it could even see him, whether it would be one of the dragons that needed eye contact to establish trust or needed to be looked away from, but all that he could do was hope and stand tall as the teeth rushed down towards him, so close that he could hear them grinding and whispering in the air–

“Hiccup!” Fishlegs shouted, somewhere out of view.

He had just enough time to think that this was a huge mistake, and that it was a real pity that the Berserkers were going to be around to see it, when the Whispering Death swerved aside. It plunged down into the ground not six feet away, sending Hiccup stumbling sideways with his heart pounding and his throat dry.

But alive.

One of the Whispering Deaths roared, further away from the village, and then there was an answering one from one of the others. Hiccup saw movement in the distance, heard rumblings in the earth, and another of the Whispering Deaths surged up to join its fellows.

“They’re heading south,” said Hiccup, panting despite the run not having been all that hard. He looked around for Fishlegs, and caught sight of him round the side of his house, holding a shield up almost desperately. The ground between them was smooth, but Hiccup strode over in place of running, remembering what Gobber had said about noise. “Fishlegs! They’re heading south!”

“As long as they’re heading to _not here_ , I am all for it,” said Fishlegs fervently. Piglegs was standing close behind him, clutching an axe that seemed almost as large as she was. This had all been meant to stop.

The Wildlands might make sense as hunting ground, for boar or deer, but they weren’t the only things down there now. Aware of Dagur not all that far away, holding his axe in both hands as he examined the tunnel entrance, Hiccup gave Fishlegs the most meaningful look he could muster. “They’re heading towards _Astrid_.”

Fishlegs’s eyes went wide, and he lowered the shield slightly. “Oh Thor,” he said.

Astrid had six dragons in the cove, not counting the hatchlings, but Toothless could not fly on his own and the stirrup currently on his saddle was the one which only Hiccup’s foot could control. It was less clumsy than the one meant for boots, but right now it meant that Toothless was stuck in the cove.

“Oh Thor is right,” said Hiccup. “Find Snotlout and the twins; I need to tell my father.”

He turned away and almost bumped into Dagur, who was looking markedly disappointed at the turn of events. “Hiccup! You must know where they’re going. We should follow them!”

“The Wildlands are hard to cross at the best of times, Dagur,” said Hiccup, feeling desperation build. He had to tell his father, had to get the other riders to the cove as soon as they could. From the roars and sounds of crashing wood in the forest, the Whispering Deaths were searching as they went, following the scents or whatever they were doing in their search for the other dragons. “Berk is safe, and that’s the important thing.”

“You can’t just let them _go_!” said Dagur. His expression turned to one of disgust, lip curling, and he stepped back from Hiccup before his brow set and he turned to the village at large. “Berserkers!” he called, voice echoing around the village. Hopefully the Whispering Deaths really _were_ out of hearing. “To me! Tonight, we hunt dragon!”

 

 

 

 

 

Stoick agreed with Hiccup: if the Berserkers were hunting dragons, in the direction of the cove, the only thing that the Berkians could do was try to get ahead of them. He scrambled a team from among those not putting out fires or already starting to clear the rubble of houses and check that no-one had been trapped.

It was cold as the two groups of Vikings made their way towards the cove, but Hiccup was only faintly aware of it, fear and determination burning together under his skin. He knew that it had to be the cove, even if Dagur and his men did not, and managed to find Fishlegs and the others and get them to follow him away from Spitelout and the warriors that formed the main group.

“How can you be sure?” Snotlout hissed, as they skidded down into a gulley half-hidden by bushes. It got wider to the west, where the trail of the Whispering Deaths had looked to be heading, and was harder to cross. Hiccup had learnt that the hard way.

“They went after where Toothless lives, where Stormfly lives, and where Meatlug lives,” said Hiccup. In the darkness, it was hard to see the part of the gulley wall where a rock jutted out like a step and made getting out a lot easier. His left leg was really burning now, but all that it took to ignore it was the bite of knowing that Toothless and Astrid and all of the dragons were in danger. Hiccup grabbed a hold of the lip and pulled himself out, grunting with the effort. “If you want to risk it, go ahead and go back to the others.”

It was a cheap shot, and Hiccup felt a stab of guilt, especially after what he had been saying in Snotlout’s defence just that evening. But he saw the shock on Snotlout’s face harden into angry determination, and offered him a hand to get out of the gulley in turn. It was slapped aside.

The Berserkers were audible in the still night air, crashing through the forest with the occasional optimistic battlecry that petered off when nothing was found to fight. “Huh,” said Tuffnut, as Hiccup helped pull him up again. “And I thought _we_ made a lot of noise.”

“We could totally make more noise than that,” said Ruffnut.

“Well, unfortunately it’s not a competition,” Hiccup said quickly. He didn’t blame Fishlegs for looking a little more hesitant about climbing out. “I’m sure you would win if it were, but there’s really no need to demonstrate.”

“Are you sure?” Tuffnut waving around an axe as he spoke did not exactly do wonders for Hiccup’s optimism. “I mean, we could totally–”

“We’re good, thank you. Now come on, let’s get to our dragons.”

The gulley would buy them some time; not a lot, but hopefully enough of them to get ahead. They had to get to the Whispering Deaths before the Whispering Deaths got to the cove. Perhaps Fishlegs would be best to carry on and get Astrid to evacuate it, just in case, but that still left Toothless.

If there was one thing dragons had, it was not timing.

Hiccup’s thoughts were interrupted by a blast of fire in the sky ahead of them. It had the distinctive shape of the Whispering Death, and Hiccup only winced at the sight, but then an answering blast of white-hot Nadder fire answered and Hiccup caught the outline of a dragon cutting upwards into the air.

“They’re at the cove,” he said.

Snotlout gulped. “That... wasn’t part of the plan, was it?”

Somewhere off to their right, the Berserker battlecry rang out, this time in many voices and not just one. “Nope,” said Hiccup, “definitely not. Run!”

For once, they did as he said. Throwing caution – and quiet – to the wind, they broke into crashing runs, ducking under the boughs of trees and plunging through bushes towards the cove. Flashes of dragon fire above them intermittently lit the ground, and Hiccup cursed under his breath as he ran, having to watch each step. The roar of a Monstrous Nightmare rumbled through the night, and through the trees Hiccup caught glimpses of a burning silhouette pushing its way up into the night, breathing billowing orange-red fire that sent a Whispering Death rolling away and screaming.

“No, no, _no_ ,” Hiccup pushed himself harder, smacking smaller branches out of the way and ignoring the pains that shot through him. There was no way that the Berserkers would miss that, and now they would know that at the very least, there was a Monstrous Nightmare in the area as well. Whether they were as prized on Berserker Island as they had once been on Berk, he did not know, but neither did he want to find out.

He felt the rumbling of the ground before he heard it, and threw himself aside as a Whispering Death erupted from the ground beside him in a whirl of teeth. Hiccup was showered with earth, and covered his head with his hand as he lay on his side, watching from beneath his arm until the creature was well into the sky, turning to scan with its wide white eyes.

He should have listened to Gobber.

With a roar, Hookfang – and he was fairly sure that it was Hookfang, that wingspan felt familiar even if flying played tricks with perspective – sank his teeth into the tail of one of the Whispering Deaths. It howled and recoiled, movements jerky in the air. Another blistering shower of Nadder fire above them made him look up; it seemed that Astrid was having some success in driving off at least one other of the dragons. If he squinted, he could just about see her, a distortion of Stormfly’s silhouette more than a figure in her own right.

“For the Berserkers!” bellowed a Berserker voice, and Hiccup cursed his complete inability to catch a break. The Berserkers charged out of the trees to their east, all glinting swords and raised torches, and though the Whispering Death that was close to the trees did indeed peel away, Hookfang recoiled into the sky as well. One of the Whispering Deaths plunged down beyond the skyline, into the cove, and beneath the hubbub Hiccup heard a roar that was definitely Meatlug. This was getting worse. Crossbow bolts cut into the sky, and Hiccup ran back to the trees to grab Fishlegs by the arm.

“Get into the cove, and get the hatchlings out,” he said. Fishlegs opened his mouth, but Hiccup just squeezed harder. “Please, don’t argue, just do it. I can’t be sure the Berserkers won’t find the tunnel entrance.”

Finally, Fishlegs nodded, and Hiccup gave him a vague push in the direction of the tunnel. All that they could do now was damage control. If they could just drive all of the dragons away and persuade Dagur and his men that was the best that could be done...

A Night Fury’s call cut through the air.

The Berserker would not recognise it, by all the gods Hiccup hoped that they would not recognise it, but it made him stop so sharply that he thought his heart would be knocked out of his chest. _Toothless_. That was where he should be, not running around among humans trying to get them apart, desperately trying to protect one group of dragons and preferably wanting to protect the other half as well because no matter what, killing dragons helped solve nothing. Stopping it, showing the dragons that humans could help, had to be a better solution.

“Come on, Toothless,” said Hiccup. “You protect those hatchlings.”

Purple-white fire lit up the sky like lightning, but in the flash Hiccup could see that the Whispering Death had dodged aside, whipping through the air. Toothless fired again, and this time the Whispering Death was driven back and had to roll upright, screaming anger down into the cove.

Hiccup had to tell himself that there was nothing he could do. He ran towards the Berserkers, where Dagur was scrambling up onto a rocky outcrop to scream defiance at one of the Whispering Deaths. It turned in the air to face him, roared back, and then plunged down through the air. Dagur raised his axe two-handed, shouting something that involved the word deranged, but as the Whispering Death was streaming down Hookfang slammed into it from the side and then fell, rolling head-over-tail, to crash into the treeline.

The Berserkers gave a roar of approval and rush towards the fallen dragons. Flames flickered in the trees, but it would not really catch, not at this time of year. More dangerous to the humans were Hookfang’s sweeping wings, the spines that the Whispering Death lashed into the ground. Each one was as long as Hiccup’s forearm, and he threw himself behind a tree as they embedded themselves into it.

From among the men, people were screaming, but Hiccup could not even tell whether it was pain, bloodlust, or both. The Berserkers did not even seem to notice that the Berkians were holding back, even pulling away members of the Berserker group here and there to keep them away from a sweep of Hookfang’s burning wings. Again, Hookfang sprang up and grappled with the Whispering Death, bringing it to the ground, and among the snarling and roaring Hiccup heard a note that might well have been pain. It was hard to see in the trampled snow whether it was mud or blood that marked it.

The Whispering Death lurched into the air, snapping its tail around one last time and sending another wave of spines down among them. Hiccup hauled his shield above his head and felt the impact of one as it struck him. He could see Dagur again, axe in hand, behind Hookfang and readying to strike. Hookfang was still recoiling from the spines, one jammed into his back and smouldering among his flames.

“No!” Hiccup shouted, but it was too late, Dagur’s axe was rising into the air and a look of fevered glee was in his eyes and–

The axe was struck from Dagur’s hand, hard enough to send him staggering aside. He yelled in shock, and Hookfang whirled, then managed to pull himself into the air just as another volley of crossbow bolts were fired. A wave of flame from Hookfang’s jaws took care of them, but there was a weakness to the flame which meant that he had to be running out of fire, and the Berserkers were nowhere near out of bolts.

Spikes of ice swept up from the ground in front of Hookfang, so fast that Hiccup felt a wash of cold air rolling back from them. Dagur gave a rather un-masculine shriek of surprise, but then caught himself and whirled, drawing a seax from his belt and lunging into the darkness at the lower end of the wall of ice.

More spikes shot up, but Dagur dodged around them, bringing his seax down and shattering the points of them. Hiccup scrambled after him, the ground slick beneath him, just as Dagur slammed into a wall of glass-clear ice that shot up from the ground.

Dagur slammed his fist against the ice, but it held, and he snarled down at it. “Wildlings! In league with the dragons! I should have known!”

Grabbing him by the arm, Hiccup tried to haul him away. “No, Dagur! We came for the dragons! It’s too dangerous to go after a wildling!”

“No,” said Dagur. He clasped Hiccup’s forearm in return, eyes glittering in the darkness. “Nothing is too dangerous for the chiefs of the Hooligan tribes. Where no-one goes!”

He grasped his seax between his teeth, a move that was bound to come back to bite him some day, and before Hiccup could hold him back had pulled away and jumped against the wall of ice. It was some five feet broad at the ground, and was eight feet high at least, but that did not stop Dagur from getting a hold on the top and, in one fast movement, pulling himself over it.

“No!” said Hiccup. It was his turn to slam a fist against the ice, heart in his mouth, unable to even think about the fighting still raging behind him. Dagur plunged into the bushes on the other side, and there was a muffled scream, a glimpse of something pale in the darkness. Hiccup slammed his fist against the ice again, and this time it cracked beneath his hand, the strength suddenly gone from it; a third blow and it shattered, sending shards of ice the size of Hiccup’s head in all directions with a sound like a cracking whip.

Dagur was only feet away, grappling with a figure; they were slight, short, dressed in dark clothes and hooded, and it took Hiccup an absurd moment to realise that it was Elsa at all. Her left hand was wrapped around Dagur’s right wrist, holding the shaking seax away from her body, while he had hold of her right hand and was forcing it away. Dagur twisted, putting the force of his body behind it, and Elsa stumbled back, the hood on the cloak she was wearing fell back.

“You!” said Dagur, but it was a growl, not a shout; Elsa’s hair was smeared dark and plastered down against her head, mud streaked her face, and as she looked up with terror on her face Hiccup saw that her eyes were solid white.

Frozen.

He lunged forwards for Dagur just as another spike of ice shot up from the ground, pushing between Dagur and Elsa and forcing them apart so quickly that Dagur was knocked to the ground. From the corner of his eye, Hiccup saw Elsa flee as he grabbed hold of Dagur, turning a warning grab into a pull at the last minute to tug the older boy upright again.

“Did you see that?” said Dagur. He scrambled for his seax on the ice-strewn ground. “The dragon. It protected it!”

“The... the wildling?” said Hiccup. He had to buy time for Elsa to get away; Dagur was separate from his men, and if he did not call immediately then Elsa would be gone. She knew these woods better than Berkians, never mind Berserkers. “Why would they do that?”

“They must be in league,” said Dagur. His hand tightened around the seax until his knuckles cracked. “We should hunt it down now.”

“With that much magic, she’ll be long gone,” said Hiccup, then caught the all-too-personal pronoun slipping in. Wildlings were supposed to be something not-quite human, that was what they had thought before. “The best thing for your men is to face the dragons.”

Dagur looked for a moment longer in the direction that Elsa had gone, then turned back towards the torchlight of his men. “Yes. The dragons. Come, Hiccup!”

He charged off in the direction of the clearing again, but the sound was already winding down. By the time that they emerged from the trees, what they found was mostly an argument, Berserkers and Berkians shouting at each other and their own people pretty much indiscriminately.

“What’s going on here?” snapped Dagur, wading straight into their midst. People parted for him, but closed behind, and Hiccup let it happen. He skirted the edge of the group until he found Snotlout, who was pale and shaking.

“The dragons have fled!” shouted a man in the darkness, a Berserker by his faint accent. “And the Berkians say it’s no good pursuing them!”

There was another outbreak of shouting, and Hiccup turned to Snotlout under its cover. “Where did they go?”

“I think Hookfang went back into the cove,” said Snotlout. “The Whispering Deaths flew away, towards the shore.”

“And Elsa’s gone too,” Hiccup muttered. Snotlout looked at him in surprise, but he did not have time to answer now.

“They’ll be over the water,” barked Spitelout. “You can’t chase them without boats, and they’d have the advantage. You’ve driven them off!”

“We weren’t looking to drive them off. We were looking to kill them!” Another Berserker, blood dripping from his nose, elbowed his way through to look Spitelout in the eye, then turned and started chanting, drawing his fellows into it. “Kill, kill, kill! Kill, kill, kill!”

Spitelout rolled his eyes. “And can you fly yourselves? You’ve had your fight! That’s what dragons are like!”

“And what about the wildling?” called Dagur. The crowd went quiet, and even Spitelout looked uncertain for a second. “It can’t fly. What about hunting it?”

There was a boulder just a couple of steps away that would put Hiccup at least at head height of most of the Berserkers. He gestured for Snotlout to give him a boost onto it, and resisted the urge to cup his hands around his mouth. Presence, he told himself. Don’t look desperate.

“The wildling is long gone as well,” he said. Many of the Berserkers looked round in surprise, and no few of the Berkians did as well. “We’ve been fighting wildlings for a long time on Berk. Nearly as long as we’ve been fighting dragons. And there may not have been a Bork when it came to wildlings, but we’ve still learnt about them.”

He did not add how recently, and how much of a revelation it had been.

“To hunt a wildling,” said Hiccup, aware that he was moving from blustering into outright lying, “you need a prepared party. A plan. They’re different than dragons, more cunning.” In case a bit of flattery would help out, he added, looking straight at Dagur: “It’s an achievement enough just to face one of them.”

“You faced a wildling?” said Spitelout, with a little too much amazement in his voice. “And lived? To Dagur!” He thrust his axe into the air and cheered.

Within seconds, their men and Dagur’s followed his lead, and Dagur’s scowl quickly softened to a smug look as Spitelout enthusiastically congratulated him on his achievement. Hiccup slid down from his rock and shouldered his way into the crowd, finally managing to make his way to the centre of it all.

“Spitelout,” he said, with more authority than he really felt that he deserved right now. “You take Dagur and most of the men back to Berk. Check the trail along the way, make sure that there isn’t anything that we missed. I’ll keep a handful here and check over the battlefield.”

It felt wrong to call it that, a stretch of mud and trees that was really nothing more than a trampled mess, smouldering in places and scattered with Whispering Death spines in others, but Hiccup pressed forward. Dagur looked as if he was about to protest, but Spitelout nodded. “Good idea. You take your pick of the men, and I’ll take our hero back for some celebrations. To Dagur!” he added again, and the responding roar made Hiccup wince. Before it had even died down, Spitelout had planted one hand on Dagur’s back and was steering him back in the direction that the party had come, made very obvious by the gap in the trees and the hacked-apart bushes at its base.

“Let me guess,” said Snotlout, “I’m staying, right?”

Hiccup didn’t even acknowledge that. “Come on, help me find the twins. We need to figure out what happened here, and I need to find Elsa.”

After everything that had happened over the years, he even felt a little grateful to Spitelout for that. It seemed that Hookfang had made a better impression than even Hiccup had thought.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has the aftermath of last chapter's violence, including dragon injury and death, and human injury.

They found the twins admiring one of the Whispering Death spines that had embedded itself in Ruffnut’s helmet, and Hiccup supposed that after what had just happened that was the best that he could hope for. “Join Astrid and Fishlegs in the cove,” he said, hoping that they would still be there. “I need to find Elsa.”

There were scattered torches on the ground, dropped by the Vikings when the fighting had broken out, and Hiccup found one that was still smouldering. He cupped his hands around it and blew on it to coax back some light, then made his way back over to the ice within the trees.

“Elsa?” The men should be out of hearing now, especially considering the racket they were making. “Elsa, where are you? It’s just Hiccup.”

He made himself stand still to listen, and just about heard something that might have been his name.

“Elsa, is that you?”

“Hiccup?”

This time he definitely heard it, and had to duck low under a bent tree to follow the sound. “It’s me. Where are you?”

“Please, no...” Elsa’s voice trailed off into a whimper, and Hiccup pushed his way around the edge of a firethorn bush to find her huddled against the trunk of a fallen tree, hands raised in front of her and terror written on her face. She stared sightlessly, her eyes white from corner to corner, and Hiccup realised with an almost physical blow that they were covered in ice.

He carefully leant the torch against the torn-up roots of the tree, and dropped down to his knees in front of Elsa. Her hands twitched at the sound, head turning sharply, and Hiccup froze. “It’s just me. It’s all right.”

“Trollwort,” she said. Her voice shook, hands tense and body coiled. “ _Melltaa_.”

She had not used that word in a very long time. _Please_ had been one of the words that she had learnt early on, slipping easily into her vocabulary. “All right,” said Hiccup again. He wished that he knew what other words he could say to her. He reached out as if to touch her hands, but the moment that his fingers brushed her skin she jerked them away. “Where are your bracelets?”

“On the tree,” she said, with a slight twitch of her head towards the fallen log. “There is a branch. Two...” Annoyance flickered on her face. “Two branches.”

“A fork,” he said. Hiccup peered along the length of the tree, pushing up slightly onto his toes, until he caught sight of a forked branch. The trollwort bracelets were delicately hung on it, mere slips in the moonlight. “I’ve got them. Give me a moment.”

He hurried to retrieve the bracelets, hunkered down again, and carefully pressed them into Elsa’s hand. She jumped at the touch, then clutched at them, leaning into the hold; Hiccup kept hold of her hands as her tight, steady breaths became ragged. The white across her eyes thinned and faded, water trickling down her cheeks, until finally he saw the blue once again.

Elsa’s eyes focused on him, she blinked, and small shards of ice were pushed down onto her cheeks. Her eyes beneath were pink and bloodshot, but it was clear that she could see him, and Hiccup felt a rush of relief as he reached in and hugged her. She huffed, but did not pull away.

“It’s all right,” he said, one more time. “I’ve got you.”

“I had to come,” said Elsa. “The dragons. I must.”

“I understand. I came as well.” Not that he had been able to save Hookfang, not in the way that Elsa had done, but he understood the need to follow where the danger was going. “Come on. The others are here. We should get back to the dragons.”

He shifted his weight to stand up, tugging on Elsa’s hands. She allowed herself to be pulled upright, not taking her eyes from him as he slid one hand out of hers and picked up the torch again. It had managed to keep burning, mercifully, and he used it to lead them back through the trees and to the clear ground. The others were nowhere in sight, but he could hear Astrid’s voice, indistinct but obviously furious. She gave a scream of frustration, and Elsa went to shy away again, but Hiccup kept a tight hold on her hand.

“Astrid... does that. Come on, the dragons are still in the cove by the sound of things.”

It was more difficult to get the torch through the narrow tunnel, and he had to drop Elsa’s hand for a while. He kept the corner of his eye on her, wondering how Dagur could not have recognised her. Then again, Dagur was the sort to see what he wanted to see.

He straightened up as he reached the cove, shocked still. The corpse of a Whispering Death lay half-in, half-out of the pool, a huge gash along its belly spilling its guts onto the shore. Both Toothless and Stormfly were still standing close to it, hissing and growling. Hookfang was huddled in one of the caves, Snotlout trying to coax him out again, while Barf and Belch limped along the wall of the cove and Meatlug huddled tight around Skyfire and Silversnap.

Worst was the female Nightmare. She was standing in the open, blood dripping from an open wound on her head, keening over the bodies of two of her hatchlings. Though it was harder to see wounds on the small figures, the red stains and limp forms said more than enough.

“What... happened?” said Hiccup. He climbed down to ground level and walked over, feeling as if he was having to push through water to do so.

Astrid rounded on him. She still had her axe in her hand, and there was blood splattered across her face and bare arms. “Them!” she said, pointing at the Whispering Death with her axe. “They came for the hatchlings! They...” breaking off, she gave another roar of fury and turned to bury the axe in the head of the Whispering Death. Its body jerked, teeth shifting in its mouth. “They were going to _eat_ them!”

Nausea built in his throat. He approached the female Nightmare; her head jerked up and she growled at him, but the sound faded and she bent her head over her hatchlings again. Hiccup raised a hand and, when she did not flinch, stroked her cheek gently.

“Hiccup, why would they do this?” said Fishlegs. He was standing over Meatlug defensively, but there was still the tension to run in his body. “Why would dragons kill other dragons? They’re not the Red Death!”

“No,” he said. The female Nightmare pressed her cheek into his hand, making a low murmuring sound that was not at all like the happy chuffs he was used to. “But... birds eat other birds. Fish eat other fish. Maybe some dragons...” he looked down at the hatchling’ bodies. “Eat other dragons.”

The others looked at him in horror, but Astrid at least had some realisation mixed in there as well. She stepped away from the Whispering Death, glancing over its form again. Dragons had always been dragons, as far as Vikings were concerned; they might have named them, described them, but it had always been _kill on sight_. Perhaps part of learning about dragons was going to be learning that some of them really were as bad as they had feared.

He did not want to think too long on that now, however. “Are _you guys_ all right?” said Hiccup. They were still gaping at him. “That has to be the most important thing, guys. Are any of you injured?”

“I’m not hurt.” Fishlegs was the first one to actually offer him a response. Hiccup looked over at the twins, who mumbled and shrugged, then at Snotlout.

“I’m fine,” he said, not sounding it at all. He did not look physically injured, though, and there was nothing to gain from arguing now.

Finally, Hiccup looked over at Astrid. She avoided his gaze, reaching over to tug her axe from the Whispering Death’s corpse. “Astrid,” he said, softly.

She shrugged as she put the head of her axe to the ground and leant on the handle, other arm coming across her body. “A couple of burns. I’ll put cold water on them, they’ll be fine. Got to wash this off anyway.” She gestured to the blood on her face.

“What about Stormfly?”

“She’s fine.” Pride crept back into Astrid’s voice again. “Her wings are tough enough to handle spines, after all.”

He wondered faintly whether most dragons were best designed to fight against others of their own species, but could not hold onto the thought without it making him feel even more sick. “Guys?” Hiccup glanced around the others. “Do I need to make this a roll call?”

“Meatlug seems fine. I don’t think the Whispering Deaths could get through her skin,” said Fishlegs.

“Barf and Belch got hit with a few spines.” Tuffnut said, almost sullenly. Ruffnut was holding Barf’s head against her chest, and the dragon did not look in the mood to pull away or play games as he usually would. “I think we found them all.”

“There might be small ones from near the tail,” said Hiccup, eyeing the spines that ran in descending size the full length of the dragon’s body. “Then we’ll need to wash them out as well. Snotlout?”

“Hookfang’s got some injuries. But he can handle it,” added Snotlout defiantly.

“We’ll look him over the same as the others. Where’s Toothless?” he raised his voice. “Bud? Where are you?”

A rumble echoed around one of the caves, then Toothless appeared as a shadow in shadows, wings still half-spread. Hiccup sighed in relief and slipped away from the female Nightmare, heading straight over to Toothless. He was limping on one of his hind legs, a spine embedded in his thigh, and Hiccup hurried over to cup his chin. With a murmur, Toothless nuzzled into Hiccup’s chest, and Hiccup dropped his head for a moment, closing his eyes.

“You’re all right, bud. I got you.”

Toothless chirped, the sound reverberating through Hiccup’s chest, and he let go only because he needed to look at the wound. The spine was a good ten inches long as it projected from Toothless’s leg, but the wound was at least not bleeding at the moment.

“First time I’ve seen you get caught,” said Hiccup quietly. He squirmed out of his vest beneath his cloak and bundled it up. Perhaps there was an upside to not wearing his new vest, after all. “Let’s get that out. He looked round to the others. “You guys know how to wash out a wound. Fishlegs, give Snotlout a hand.”

It probably said a lot that neither of them raised an objection to that.

“Elsa...” she was still standing by the entrance to the cove, so streaked with mud she was barely recognisable. He did not want to ask her if she wanted to wash off while everyone was watching her, though. “Could you help me?”

She nodded. Hiccup rubbed his forehead again, then turned back to Toothless and pressed the vest alongside the spine wound. He slid out the spine, another four inches at least, and pressed the vest on quickly as blood started to flow. At least the spines were not barbed. A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the others were leading their dragons over to the water as well, and Astrid was already pulling off her boots. Well, at least on Berk they were used to wading in cold water.

Toothless huffed a greeting as Elsa approached, and she ran a hand over the top of his head. He sniffed at the mud that streaked her clothes, licked her wrist, then pulled a face and grumbled at the taste of it.

“You might want to get cleaned up as well,” said Hiccup quietly. She had been so grateful for the soap, all those moons ago. Elsa gave an almost embarrassed look down at herself, then reached up to rub some of the mud off her cheek. “It’s all right,” he said. “Hey, it stopped Dagur from recognising you. I’m sure people would do worse things for that.”

He lifted away the vest, and more blood seeped out. Wincing, Hiccup pressed the fabric back down again. “Come on, bud. Let’s get you over to the water and clean this out. It doesn’t look too bad, at least.”

 

 

 

 

 

He was not sure how long it took to get all of them cleaned up and the dragons fully checked over, but the moon had definitely moved across the sky and Hiccup could feel exhaustion starting to set in. Elsa had gathered her nerve to remove her bracelets again and freeze those wounds that were still bleeding on the dragons, and though Hookfang had snorted and looked confused at the sensation he had calmed down quickly enough.

Astrid had originally bought blankets to sleep in, but instead she had used them to wrap up the bodies of the Monstrous Nightmare hatchlings. “They got one of the Nadders as well,” she said, when only Hiccup could hear her. “But... there’s nothing left there.”

He wanted to comfort her, but wasn’t sure that Astrid of all people would accept it. Instead, Hiccup helped to move the blanket-wrapped bundles to the edge of the cove, where they could think about what to do with them. The blood would fade, soak into the soil, and already the twins were collecting all of the Whispering Death spines that they could find.

“Barf and Belch should be big enough to move it, right?” said Hiccup, with a nod to the body. Astrid looked at him blankly for a moment. “If we rig up some rope. We can move it out of here, at least.”

“Not right now, though,” she said.

That, he had to admit. “No, not after tonight. But tomorrow, maybe. I don’t want to leave it too long.”

He didn’t need to explain that to Astrid, who nodded grimly and eyed the corpse again. At least it was not the height of summer, but with the skin broken and the guts spilling out it would still begin to decay quickly enough.

“It might be worth you decamping for the night.”

Astrid shrugged. “Wasn’t going to be sleeping anyway. But where else is there big enough to fit them all?”

There were still plenty of them, even now; six adult dragons, four young Nightmares, three Nadders, and Skyfire and Silversnap. But they could not take them back to Berk, even to the Academy, with the Berserkers still in residence. “Nowhere,” admitted Hiccup, with a wave of his hand. “But I really don’t want to leave you in here with...” he waved first to the Whispering Death, and then to the hatchlings.

“If we don’t have a choice, then we don’t have a choice. We’ll live with it.”

All that they could do, Hiccup supposed, was the best that they could. “The tides will be in the Berserkers’ favours early tomorrow. You can probably start heading back by first light.”

“And him?” Astrid pointed to Toothless. “Are you going to come walking down at first night?”

Were it not for the fact that Dagur would doubtless complain about it, Hiccup would have been more than happy to spend the rest of the night with the dragons instead. Instead, he groaned. “If I can take him back to the edge of Berk now, without the others following... he should be hard enough to see at night.”

“You’ve been flying before without being spotted,” said Astrid, with just enough acid in her voice to betray how shaken she was.

After what had happened, Hiccup did not at all blame her. “Exactly. And the Berserkers will probably be wondering already why I’m not back. The rest of you can get away with it,” he waved an arm to encompass the others, just as Barf managed to grab a fish from the pool and Belch proceeded to start squabbling over it with him.

“The joys of being the son of the chief.”

“Do you think Snotlout would trade with me?”

Astrid finally snorted, anger softening a little, and went to rub at the burn on her left arm before catching herself and putting her hand on her hip again. “If it got him to sit at the table with Dagur? Possibly.”

Hiccup was not quite quick enough to stop himself from wondering what Snotlout would have done if he had been the one pinned to the door by Dagur. “Thank you for that,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “In any case, trading isn’t an option. I’ll take Toothless back to the edge of town, find a quiet place for him to sleep.” This morning had demonstrated that his home was not safe from Dagur’s intrusions, although the downstairs bedroom might just be an option. The workshop was unfortunately a little too small.

“And those guys?” Astrid nodded to the others.

“If you’re all right with them staying here...” Hiccup waited for Astrid to nod, though she had her lips pressed tightly together as she did so. “Some of them might want to stay with their dragons. Otherwise, I’m sure they can find their way back.” Astrid looked at him dubiously. “They aren’t _that_ bad.”

“At least if they aren’t back by sunrise we’ll know where to look,” she said.

He was too tired to have this argument just now. “I’ll take Elsa back with me, if she wants.” Elsa had managed to wash the worst of the mud from her face and hair, although there were still some dirty streaks on the crown of her head. Her eyes still looked sore. “Where did Toothless’s saddle end up this time?”

“I’ll grab it. You go talk to the others. I can see Fishlegs wanting to stay here, so you might need to give the others directions if they want to head back...”

 

 

 

 

 

Hiccup was not all that surprised when everyone chose to stay at the cove, even if Astrid did not look too happy about it. He suspected that she would rather have sat by herself for a while, but the others needed their dragons and the dragons probably needed them too.

Toothless seemed to understand when Hiccup asked him to stay in one of the old barns, and climbed into the hayloft with a rumble to himself. Even knowing that he was there, Hiccup could hardly see him in the shadows.

He left Elsa back at the house, where Stoick had left a note to say that he was at the Great Hall while Gobber was helping oversee the clearing up after the dragon attack. It was going to be morning before they could really see what the damage was, but there was still work that could be done and fires that could be put out. Unfortunately, Hiccup knew exactly where he was going to be expected, and only stayed long enough to put on fresh clothes before heading to the Great Hall.

It seemed that the Berserkers had insisted on the feast despite the damage that had been done to the town. They were far more jovial than they had been before the attack, singing songs about death and battle and toasting each other with horns of mead. Hiccup made his way to the top table, where Dagur was re-enacting and liberally embellishing the story of his fight with the wildling. His description of their demonic appearance was eyebrow-raising enough – although Hiccup had to admit that Elsa’s frozen eyes had been terrifying to see, at least for a moment – but to hear him tell the story Elsa had been wielding a sword made of ice and chanting demonic phrases.

At a guess, that had been cursing in Marulosen. But Hiccup kept that to himself as he took the seat between his father and Dagur that had very clearly been saved for him.

Another of Dagur’s men took over with his own exaggerated story of hunting what was apparently the largest deer on Berserker Island, with the most impressive set of antlers that had ever been seen. Then there were toasts, boasting, and Dagur seemed to contemplate trying to get Stoick to join in before deciding that Hiccup was the easier target and demanding that he add to their overblown tales.

He could not talk about the Red Death, not again. “There was... there was an attack before Snoggletog. By the Outcasts,” he said.

“Really?” Dagur actually looked vaguely surprised. “That hasn’t happened in some years.”

“It was because of the Red Death,” said Hiccup, one last layer of truth before he started building up the lies that would have to follow. “They noticed the fog receding. They’d heard rumours, they said. They wanted to know who had killed the Red Death.”

He left out Elsa. For that part, he left out the fact that he had been kidnapped just by opening a door and sticking a bag over his head, both because it was not something he wanted to admit in front of Dagur and because making things sound more impressive was well within the spirit of this story-telling game. Instead it was a fight in which Hiccup was only overwhelmed by numbers, and while on the boat on the way to Dragon Island he had broken free from his restraints, overpowered the Outcasts, and stolen their boat to sail back instead.

The Berserkers appreciated it, and even Dagur laughed at the appropriate points, before it devolved into a discussion about how the various Berserkers at the table would have fought Alvin instead. Knives were waved around, and mead quaffed, but when Hiccup looked over at Stoick he got an approving nod, and that was better than anything else.

For the first time that he had been involved in one of these boasting contests, Hiccup supposed that had gone quite well. He lapsed back into silence and let Dagur launch into another grandiose tale, this one about a dissenter from his own village whom he had taken on in single combat and killed for her infraction. He tugged down the collar to show the scar that cut across his chest from the combat, and his men chipped in with descriptions of how the fight had looked from the outside.

Hiccup nodded whenever it seemed appropriate, and drank his mead as slowly as he could get away with. Something told him that it was going to be a long night.

 

 

 

 

 

It was Stoick who called a halt to the ‘celebrations’ of the ‘hunt’, and Hiccup was grateful for it despite the fact that it had to be turning towards morning again. Stoick reminded Dagur that the Berserkers would need to sail at first light, made their excuses, and steered Hiccup ahead of him and out of the Great Hall.

By the time that Hiccup got home, he was so exhausted that he could barely climb the stairs, and fell fully-dressed onto his bed. But when he closed his eyes, all that he could see was the bodies of the Nightmare hatchlings, stomachs torn open and mouths wide in screams that must have been lost beneath the roars of the adults. His stomach lurched so badly that he thought he might actually be sick, and he opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling instead.

Whispering Deaths were rare on Berk. Once Gobber had said the name, Hiccup had recalled them from the Book of Dragons, the words that he had carefully written down in the days before Snoggletog. But only on the rarest of occasions had they been involved in attacks, and even then there had only been one or two seen. Hiccup could not remember if he had ever written down what they were most likely to go for in attacks, be it food or humans.

To have them go after the other dragons, though... no, the hatchlings. They had fought with the other dragons, certainly, but with what Astrid had said it had to have been the hatchlings that they were after. Perhaps there had been more adult dragons than they expected for the number of hatchlings there, or perhaps the Berserkers had even helped in their own twisted way to drive off the Whispering Deaths before they could do anything worse.

It wouldn’t happen again, Hiccup promised the dragons. He would not let it.

 

 

 

 

 

Unsurprisingly, he slept particularly badly, waking up from nightmares clutched by terror that his father or Gobber or _someone_ was dying and he could not help to stop it. For a moment, he was convinced that the sweat on his forehead was blood, and he wiped it away frantically to peer at his shaking hands and realise that it was not at all.

As soon as he could hear movement outside, and people starting to get up, he rolled out of bed. At least the Berserkers were going to be on their way today, and some of this farce could be ended. His relief lasted about as long as it took to strip off yesterday’s vest and socks. Pain stabbed up through his left leg, and he snatched his hands away as if they were somehow to blame.

“That’s new,” he said, propping his left leg across his right knee. The end of his stump was red and sore, and warm to the touch when he carefully ran his fingers across it. It also hurt far more than it had any right too.

With a sigh, Hiccup looked around for his crutches, but they had long since disappeared into the corners of the house. Bending down and fishing under his bed at least produced his cane, and with a minimum of hopping, and a minimum of swearing, he managed to get himself over to the top of the stairs. He leant on the balustrade and waited for movement from downstairs to commence.

Sure enough, before too long the door to the bedroom opened and his father emerged, muttering beneath his breath. “Hey, Dad?” called Hiccup. Stoick looked around him for a moment before turning his gaze upwards. “Is Gobber up yet?”

“He’ll be a moment. Are you all right?”

“Minor leg... thing,” said Hiccup, waving a hand vaguely. “Don’t hurry him on my account.”

Leaning over the front room as nonchalantly as he could manage in yesterday’s clothes and without his foot on, he was still relieved when Gobber appeared, exchanged a few muted words with Stoick, and then fixed Hiccup with a look.

“What’ve you done with yourself this time, then?”

“I’m flattered by your faith in me,” said Hiccup dryly, as Gobber made his way to the foot of the stairs. His right leg felt too shaky to even hop back to the bed, and he waited until Gobber was there to sling an arm under his shoulders and haul him back instead.

Gobber crouched down, scooping up Hiccup’s leg with his hook in a move that had mercifully become routine many years ago. Hiccup was ready to flinch away from the touch to his leg that followed, but Gobber had a surprisingly light touch for a blacksmith and enough experience to touch the part above the red mark. “Aye, well,” he said, “in medical terms, you’ve buggered it.”

Hiccup groaned.

“Crutches for the next couple of days, until it heals up. Then we’ll have another look at the foot and make sure it’s fitting right.”

“You’re kidding, right?” said Hiccup. “I can’t see off the Berserkers on crutches!”

If he had been on crutches from the beginning, it might actually have been easier. He could have waved it off as being the injury, talked grandly about the fight that had led to him losing it, and made jokes about joining the ranks of the other Berkians with missing limbs. But to go back from just his leg to being on crutches could too easily be seen as weakness by Dagur and his men, and that was something that the son of Berk’s chief just could not risk.

Gobber sighed, but pressed his lips together, mulling things over as he looked at Hiccup’s leg. “Most of them cleared out of the Great Hall overnight to get back onto the ships. If Dagur hasn’t left the house yet, you can say your farewells there, and say that you’re too busy overseeing the clear-up to come down to the docks.”

“That’s a pretty big ‘if’, Gobber.”

“Be that as it may, I’ll not see you lose more of that leg over something as foolish as Dagur the Deranged.” He released Hiccup’s foot and got back to his feet with a grunt. “Elsa didn’t join you up here last night, then?”

“What? Oh...” it took him a moment to follow Gobber’s train of thought at all. “Oh, gods, we completely forgot with everything that happened. I didn’t get the chance, Gobber, but I really need to talk to you about the Whispering Deaths and what they did.”

“One thing at a time,” said Gobber. “Breakfast, then Berserkers, then beasties. All right?”

“Do you know where my crutches ended up?”

“I’ll have a root around downstairs, see if I can rustle them up.” He patted Hiccup on the shoulder. “Welcome to the joys of the Stump Club, lad.”

Hiccup put his head in his hands, rubbing his forehead. “Yeah,” he said, the word muffled. “I know.”

With another pat, Gobber left him to his own devices, his heavy tread on the stairs giving way to the sound of shifting furniture. The bowl of water on the side table was yesterday’s and icy cold, but it was still better than nothing to wash his face, hands and stump with and even left him feeling a little more awake. He pulled on the cleanest clothes that he had left other than the Night Fury vest, tucked his leg into his belt for want of anywhere better to hang it, and carefully manoeuvred himself downstairs with heavy use of the balustrade.

“Aha!” Just as Hiccup reached the bottom of the stairs, Gobber produced a pair of crutches from under the table with a flourish. “Thought I felt something kicking about under there.”

“Well, it’s good to know something is,” said Hiccup. He dropped into the nearest chair, not even caring that it was his father’s. “Please tell me that breakfast is something other than yak. I think Dagur made me eat about three of them last night.”

“Nope, just porridge and nuts, once I get the fire going again,” said Gobber cheerily. He abruptly chucked over one of the crutches, and Hiccup fumbled to catch it without sliding out of the chair. At least it was less of a surprise when the second one followed, and Hiccup was able to just grab it with his left hand instead.

Settling the crutches next to him, Hiccup removed his foot from his belt and gently eased it into place, cursing the Red Death all over again. If he cut round the back of the houses, he should be able to make it to the back of the house where Dagur was without the Berserkers being able to see him. Then he would only have to walk round to the front of the house, make his excuses, and make it round the back again. That, at least, should be doable.

“Everything all right?” Stoick reappeared from the bedroom, shifting the buckle of his ceremonial belt. His eyes went straight to the crutches at Hiccup’s side.

“I’m fine. Just overdid it a bit yesterday running around after Whispering Deaths,” said Hiccup. “I’ll be off the leg as soon as I’ve said my farewells to Dagur.”

Hopefully without any more compromising situations, and frankly at this point Hiccup did not care whether it was his supposed marriage or merely the fact that it was daylight that would put Dagur off.

“And if I want to catch him first, I had probably better go immediately.” He gathered his crutches and pushed to his feet, squaring his shoulders against the pressure that had honestly become unfamiliar again in the last moons. Before Gobber could intervene, he added: “And I will be back for breakfast, don’t worry. You can withhold information on the Whispering Death if you really want to make sure I’m back.”

He glanced towards Elsa’s door, but decided against disturbing her for the time being. She probably was awake already, but that just meant that she was choosing not to join them yet. No, better to leave that until later, with all of the other things that they needed to clean up in the village.

“Be careful,” said Stoick, as Hiccup slipped out of the door. Which, given past history, was probably justified. Hiccup gave a vague wave, then closed the door behind him to keep out the bitterly cold wind which immediately swept around him.

Well, at least it wasn’t raining.

Hiccup immediately slipped to the rear of the houses, which for all the softer ground and harder going would at least keep him out of sight of any stray Berserkers who were not with either the ships or Dagur. The wind helped to clear his head as he took the long route round to the house where Dagur was staying, the movement of crutches coming back to him within the distance of the first couple of houses. He tucked the crutches up against the woodshed, adjusted his foot, and went step by careful step until he reached the front door. He straightened himself up, got a stable footing, and knocked firmly on the door.

It was pulled open by a particularly huge, heavily-armoured Berserker, who looked Hiccup over with an expression that was either considering or constipated. Hiccup eyeballed him in return until the Berserker seemed to remember that this was not the way to treat the son of a chief and stepped back, opening the door and standing to attention inside it.

“Presenting, Hiccup of Berk.”

Dagur was standing at the table inside, looking over a chart laid out in front of him, while most of his men busied themselves with rolling up sleeping rolls and checking weapons. At Hiccup’s name he looked up, then waved away the man to whom he had been speaking and sauntered over to the front door.

“Good morning, Hiccup. I trust it finds you well?”

“As well as can be, thank you,” he replied, keeping his tone neutral to let Dagur conclude what he wished. “And you?”

Dagur smiled, all teeth and bright eyes. “Invigorated by the hunt. If I had known that this was what it was like to fight against dragons, I would have come here to do so earlier!” Laughing, he clapped Hiccup on the shoulder; Hiccup chuckled nervously and dug in with his right foot to keep his balance. “Perhaps I should visit again over the summer. Your father said before that was when more attacks seem to happen.”

Whether it was true or even whether his father had said it, Hiccup could not say right at that moment. “Well, perhaps if your people can spare you,” he said. “But you certainly seemed to have many plans. And you more than held your own last night,” he added with a wave. “It can’t exactly be said that you need any extra practice.”

For a moment, he thought that he might have overdone it on the compliments, as Dagur’s smile faded, but then the older boy laughed and looked pleased with himself instead. “Well, that is good to hear, especially from one who defeated the Red Death itself. So, do you have plans for this morning? Or is this a wild last-minute attempt to join me on the boat to Berserker Island?”

Though the tone of his voice was joking, his expression was a little too piercing for Hiccup’s comfort, and Hiccup edged back slightly. “Hah, well, no, Dagur, I just came to wish you and your men good winds and fair sailing. Unfortunately, I need to co-ordinate some of the clean-up efforts so that my father is free to be down at the wharves with you.”

Dagur looked disappointed, but did not immediately protest, which probably meant that Hiccup had come out with a plausible excuse. Although now that he had used it, he did rather feel that he should play a role in clearing up what the Whispering Deaths had done. Perhaps there was some way that the dragons could help.

“Well, it is certainly a pity to hear that. In any case,” Dagur extended a hand, and Hiccup hesitated at the implied politeness. “It has been a pleasure spending time on Berk. A pity that things could not have gone a little differently.”

“A pity indeed,” said Hiccup, doubting that he meant the same thing at all. He shook Dagur’s hand, and didn’t point out that he was left handed. “May the winds see you safely home.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Hiccup. I’m sure that we’ll meet again before too long.”

But not too soon, Hiccup could only hope.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: This chapter contains (non-graphic) reference to humans eating dragon meat. At the time that I drafted this chapter, this was an unconfirmed thing, but was confirmed by dialogue in _Race to the Edge: Last Auction Heroes_.

“Right,” said Gobber, depositing a bowl of porridge on the table as soon as Hiccup entered the house again. “Whispering Deaths.”

Hiccup was relieved to see that Elsa was out of her room, though she looked tired and there were still dirty marks in her hair from the night before. She was picking her way through porridge as well, and looked up to give him a faint smile as he flopped down onto the bench next to her. “Whispering Deaths,” he agreed.

“What was it you were looking to ask?”

Daylight made everything that had happened seem further off; easier, perhaps. Hiccup tapped his spoon against the rim of his bowl. “Whispering Deaths are more common near the Shivering Shores, aren’t they? That’s where Bork learnt about the greatshields?”

“Aye, they get more of them back there than they do Gronckles,” said Gobber. He sat down at the head of the table, scratching his ear with the tip of his hook. “Different islands always get different dragons, you know that, Hiccup.”

“But even so – even in your copy of the Book of Dragons – there’s nothing about Whispering Deaths attacking other dragon species.” If any copy would have held information, it would have been Gobber’s. Two generations on the Shivering Shores should have been enough to learn all that was known there, even anything new since Bork’s time. “Has it never been seen?”

Gobber sighed. “Most places don’t get so many attacks as Berk. Even the Shivering Shores only used to see Whispering Deaths once a moon or two. They never used to attack in the company of other species, though. Not like we got here.” He lowered his hook, and his expression softened. “What happened last night, lad?”

For a moment, Hiccup could not say the words. He turned back to his porridge, tracing patterns in its cooling surface with his spoon.

“Your father said that you thought they were heading towards the cove. Were they?”

“Yes,” said Hiccup finally. “They ended up fighting with our dragons. I think that they were after the hatchlings. Well,” he paused. “I know that they were after the hatchlings.”

“How so?”

He swallowed, and braced himself against the words. “They were going to eat them.” The Nadder hatchling, of course, must have been consumed altogether. He had not looked closely enough to see which one they had lost, had not been ready for that. “They killed three of them.”

Gobber sucked in his breath between his teeth. “No. We never knew that.”

Giving up on food altogether, Hiccup pushed the bowl away and sat up straighter again. “Our dragons fought them off, but... it must have been a co-ordinated attack. There were at least five of them, maybe six.”

One of the Whispering Deaths had probably drawn away some of their dragons, if he thought about the less terrible part of it. They were fast and agile, and one probably would be enough to tie up two or three of their dragons without a human to spot the tactic.

“Astrid was fighting with them,” Hiccup continued. “Maybe Fishlegs, I’m not sure. The others were outside the cove with me.”

“It’s not something I’ve ever heard of,” said Gobber, “but I don’t doubt you on it. It was you who told us what the Red Death could do.”

Perhaps he should have made the connection, but the Red Death had not quite seemed like a dragon, too huge and too powerful and too terrible. His reference had been Toothless, and to a lesser extent the other – then un-named – dragons from the arena.  At a glance, the Whispering Deaths had been more like their dragons than the Red Death, but eating other dragons was still too much of a gap for Hiccup to get his head around.

“It’s known among snakes,” Gobber continued, pulling Hiccup from his thoughts. “Or so I’ve heard. Some of them even eat their own kind.”

“Maybe that’s why the dragons nested together,” said Hiccup. “They were protecting one another, as well as their own hatchlings.” He glanced over to the door. “I told Astrid that she could probably start coming back as soon as it was light, and she’ll probably want to get everyone out of the cove as soon as she can. That carcass can’t have been good for anyone’s rest.”

“Carcass?”

“A Whispering Death,” he said. He realised that he had not even asked which of the dragons had bought it down, or whether Astrid had been involved. “And the hatchlings, but... they’ll be easier to deal with. I was thinking of having Barf and Belch move it out of the cove?”

“The Zippleback?” Gobber barely waited for a nod; names like that were most likely to come from the twins, after all. “Eh, it should be big enough. Or you could send in a few folks with axes and saws, clear it in no time.”

“They’re not eating it,” Hiccup snapped.

It cut through the room, making Gobber hesitate and even Elsa pause in place. Hiccup realised that he was breathing heavily and tried to pull back from it, but it was hard to see through the heavy rush of anger.

“Whatever it did, dragons still aren’t what we thought they were,” he continued. “They’re not just some source of material and meat now. We know that.”

Gobber fiddled with his hook against the bitten-short nails of his right hand. “It’s not been a bad winter,” he said, the words slow and considered. “I think you could talk them out of the meat. But there’s other uses in a dragon than food, Hiccup. Even a dead one, I mean.”

Berk could hardly be called a rich island. They did not – could not – waste things here. When a yak was slaughtered, it was not only for the meat, but for the bones and skin and brains and every imaginable part. If he did not think too hard then yes, it would only be fair to let them take from the Whispering Death, but it was still a dragon, and to him dragons would always lead back to Toothless.

Somewhere far off, the horn announced that the Berserkers were on their way. That, at least, was one relief.

“Do you want some time, to get your thoughts in order?” said Gobber. Hiccup nodded mutely. “Aye, fair enough. Well, you said that Astrid would be bringing the others back before too long, and they’ll have to walk with Toothless, won’t they?”

“No, no,” Hiccup waved a hand. “He’s in a barn on the edge of town. The one that had the doors ripped off in that storm last winter, you remember?”

“Good to know. I’ll stop in with him, send him on his way, and then meet those friends of yours and get them to their homes. Remind them to stay quiet about the Whispering Death for now, as well.”

“I can go,” said Elsa. She had been watching so quietly that it made Hiccup jump. “If you want to stay here.”

Gobber waved her off as he got to his feet. “No, you were out running around all night as well. And you haven’t finished that.” He pointed to her half-finished bowl of porridge. “However, if you could get him,” with a jab of his hook in Hiccup’s direction, “to eat his as well, preferably before it gets cold, I would greatly appreciate it. Right.” He straightened his moustache from where it had sprawled over one shoulder. “I will see you two shortly.”

Gobber gave them a curt wave as he left, and Hiccup picked up his spoon again even if he did not at all feel like eating. He gave Elsa the best smile that he could muster, and she half-smiled in response before looking down at the table again.

“How are your eyes?” Hiccup cocked his head, trying to look up into them, but Elsa finally looked up again. “They look better.”

“Thank you,” she said. Her eyes were still pink, but nowhere near as bloodshot as they had been in the night. “You did not sleep much.”

At least Dagur was not hear to comment on that, his treacherous mind thought, and Hiccup almost laughed at the absurdity of the image. There were shadows under Elsa’s eyes as well, though. “I’m not sure that anyone will have done, last night. Your eyes, though. Really. How are they?”

After as many years’ experience as he had been, well, Hiccup, he knew when someone was trying to change the subject. And, sure enough, Elsa looked a little guilty; he was not expecting the fear that came with it, though. “They do not hurt now,” she said. “They... I have never done that before. I think it is getting stronger.”

Hiccup’s breath caught in his throat. Though Elsa had spoken a little about her magic before, she had only said that it had grown stronger when she had been eleven or so, just entering that awkward stage between child and adult. “If they’ve never done that then... we don’t know. Not just from that,” he said. He wasn’t sure whether that was actually something reassuring or not, and from the way that Elsa swallowed and her free hand tightened into a fist, it probably wasn’t. “I mean, it’s something to keep in mind. But you were in control last night. You were fine.”

She looked at him wearily. “I did not know what I was doing, Hiccup.” There was something about her words, as if she had been repeating them to herself for some time but only now saying them aloud. “What I did was too dangerous. I could have hurt Dagur. I could have hurt _you_.”

“Well, Dagur was the one attacking _you_ , for a start,” said Hiccup. “And you didn’t hurt me. I’m fine, see?” he gestured to himself with the spoon. “Well, sore leg, but that’s hardly your fault. Need to learn not to go running around so much.”

“Hiccup...”

“It’s really no good worrying about what _could_ have happened. I mean, I could have gone and tripped over a tree root and injured myself, no assistance from swords, Berserkers or dragons necessary. I'm not afraid of you, Elsa, and I really don’t think that you’re going to hurt me.”

“Hiccup,” Elsa said again, more insistently. “I thank you... for your words. But you do not...”

She sat back, rubbing her wrists. The skin there looked sore as well, and she had not put the trollwort bracelets back on since freezing the wounds on the dragons during the night. With dirty streaks in her hair she looked an awful lot more like she had when they had first met, for all the actual clean clothes and the less-hollow cheeks.

“You do not know,” she said finally. “I was much less strong than this when,” she swallowed, “when I was send to Maruloet. I could still hurt.”

“And you might be stronger, but I’m pretty sure you’re more in control now than you were then,” said Hiccup. It still felt strange to be the one doing the reassuring, even if being on the defensive was hardly a new feeling. “And... maybe you should concentrate on that.”

“Maybe,” said Elsa. She met his gaze for a moment, but before he could say anything else she got to her feet, picking up her bowl and turning away with it.

“Elsa?”

She snatched down the last couple of spoonfuls and set the bowl next to the cauldron again, then disappeared into her room. It all happened so quickly that Hiccup was still trying to pick up his crutches as she reappeared, drawing the muddied cloak from the night before over her shoulders.

“I – damn it –” he got his leg tangled up in his crutches and nearly fell off the benches in his attempt to stand up. “Elsa!”

“I should get some water,” she said, picking up the two buckets that stood empty beside the front door. She only glanced over her shoulder at Hiccup, but he thought that he saw a shine in her eyes. “I am sorry.”

Then she, too, left in a whirl, and Hiccup was alone in an empty house for the first time in a very long while. He flopped back down onto the bench, dropped his crutches, and put his head down on his arms. It looked as if the best thing he could say about today really was that he was no longer in danger of starting a war with the Berserkers. And while that was a positive, it in no way made up for the amount of screw-ups he seemed to have managed this time.

 

 

 

 

 

He must have dozed off, because he jumped awake when the door opened again and a familiar murmur made his heart light up in his chest. Hiccup spun on the bench just in time to catch a face full of Toothless, who bounded across and began enthusiastically licking Hiccup’s face and hands. Laughing, Hiccup managed to squirm free enough to press their foreheads together instead, and Toothless finally stilled, breathing slow steady against Hiccup’s chest.

“It’s good to have you back, bud,” whispered Hiccup. Toothless chuffed fishy breath in his face, and Hiccup waved it away as best he could. “Maybe not that part, though.”

“Bit of fun with the dragons,” said Gobber from the doorway, wiping his boot on the way in. “First both of the Nightmares pile into that barn you’ve been using for the female, then the rest of them went and tried to fit in as well. Just the Zippleback sitting outside.”

“That has to be a tight fit,” said Hiccup. The barn had been more than big enough for the female Nightmare, certainly, but he was struggling to imagine how even just Hookfang would fit in with her. He sighed. “Probably trying to stick together still.”

“Aye, well it took some work getting those friends of yours to leave them be and head home. Especially Fishlegs.” Gobber leant sideways to peer into Elsa’s room, where the door was still open, and frowned. “Where’s Elsa gone, then?”

“She went to get some water,” said Hiccup, rubbing his eyes. Then it caught up with him that he had been asleep, and he glanced over at the fire to see that it had settled somewhat. “Oh Thor, I don’t know how long ago that was.”

It was a bit difficult to concentrate with Toothless sitting so close that he was half-way to climbing into Hiccup’s lap, murmuring away to himself all of the time, but Hiccup settled for stroking his head with one hand and cupping his jaw with the other. It seemed to be enough to calm him.

“I know that she still likes some privacy,” he said. “It might just be that.”

Gobber grunted, not sounding too sure himself. “Well, Fishlegs told me about what happened last night in that cove of yours.”

That got his attention. Hiccup looked round sharply, chest tightening.

“Turns out it was Toothless who shot down that Whispering Death they got, and Astrid who gutted it. Somehow neither half of that seems too surprising,” Gobber added wryly, with a glance at Toothless. At the sound of his name, Toothless looked up, flaps twitching, and licked his lips hopefully. “Unless you fancy porridge, the answer is no.”

“I think he’d give it a go,” said Hiccup. “But the others, they have all headed home?”

“They said they would, and they’re adult enough to make their own decision about whether or not to lie to me,” said Gobber, with a sense of finality about the words. “Now, I’m off down to the smithy to start getting the fire going. There’ll be things need fixing, after what the Whispering Deaths were up to round the village. Your father is getting people to lay down slats over the holes in the ground, and they’re checking about to make sure there’s nothing looking likely to collapse. Last I heard, they were talking about sending someone down to check out those tunnels.”

Hiccup cocked his head. “I don’t remember anything about the inside of the tunnels in the Book of Dragons.”

“There’s a few things in Bork’s personal papers, but not much. Even he didn’t dare go far into one when he didn’t know exactly where the dragon was.”

Bork’s original notes were securely in Gobber’s possession, the handwriting terrible, the notes jumbled and interspersed with any number of things that were not to do with dragons, the parchment fragile to the touch in places. Even living in the same house as Gobber, Hiccup had only seen them on a handful of occasions.

It would be information worth learning. Not much was known about Whispering Deaths, other than how to fight them – and much of that had been learnt through trial and very frequent error. Perhaps it would be possible to stop the Whispering Deaths from attacking the young of other dragons – finding another food source for them, _something_ , anything better than the angry whisper at the back of Hiccup’s mind which said that Skrills had been wiped out by the efforts of Berkians, and perhaps it would save more dragons lives if the Whispering Deaths were too.

That anger did no good. It was time for Berk to move away from killing dragons, not just to shift their attention to more acceptable ones. After all, he had promised Oakbolt that she was not going to grow up in that world.

“ _Skiilan_ for them?” said Gobber.

Hiccup shook himself back to the moment. “Nothing,” he said, though Gobber rolled his eyes at the blatant lie. He got hold of his crutches and stood up, trying to get them comfortable beneath his armpits again. “I should probably go see if my father needs any help. Despite the lack of foot,” he added quickly, knowing that there was not a very large mental leap to pointing out that there was only so much he could do right now.

“You feel free,” said Gobber. “What are you going to do about Elsa, though, if we’re leaving the house empty?”

Leaving a note wasn’t an option, even chalk on slate which could easily be wiped clean afterwards. He wasn’t sure how to go about teaching someone to read and write, if Elsa wanted to, but then again he hadn’t had much of a clue about teaching someone a new language either. “I’ll look for her first,” said Hiccup. “She had the buckets, so she must have at least intended to go for the well.”

 _Surely_ nobody would be stupid enough to try to hurt her. Even Mildew and his few remaining supporters seemed more focused on the dragons, though whether it was because people had actually been hurt by dragons before or whether they were more visibly _different_ was hard to say. But there was a pang of fear all the same, and Hiccup had to take a deep breath to keep it at bay.

“Well, I’ll be down at the smithy if you need me,” said Gobber. He pulled the door open, and Toothless glanced to Hiccup before bounding out again. His tail clipped Gobber in the face on the way through, and Gobber sighed. “Be warned, Mildew’s on the warpath again.”

“Just what I need,” said Hiccup. He hadn’t actually meant to say that bit aloud, but Gobber didn’t look like he disagreed. He got the rhythm of the crutches again and joined Toothless outside, the cool air more refreshing than he would have anticipated.

By the light of day, the village was definitely a mess. Though any fire had been long since put out, several buildings had skins stretched over holes in their rooves, and Hiccup saw Spitelout and a few other men perched on a roof ridge, or tied to it by ropes, and investigating the damage. One of the men waved, and Hiccup hoped that they would understand his not waving back. Hiccup did not have to get further than the first stretch of open ground, though, before he saw the real damage – the ground was buckled and forced upwards like cracked ice, ending in a hole that had to be twenty feet across. Planks had been laid across it, and slim wooden stakes placed near the edge with strips of white fabric tied to them. With new moon coming around, that could be appreciated before too long.

His father, however, was nowhere in sight. Which probably meant that there was more damage, and more tunnels. It looked as if there were some benefits to being on thinner soils at least, then, if the limestone under the village was actually holding up. Gobber would have said if there had been any full collapses.

“Come on, bud,” he said to Toothless. “Let’s see if we can spot Elsa. Bud.” He was flatly ignored for his trouble, as Toothless stalked over to the hole, shoulders hunched and teeth bared. “Toothless,” said Hiccup, more insistently. “Come on.”

Toothless flared his wings slightly, growling as he came to the edge of the hole. He sniffed around the edge of it, dragged his claws through the ground, and rumbled deep and dangerous in his throat.

“Toothless!” He had been hoping to channel a little of his father’s authority, but it came out more of a groan. With a huff, however, Toothless turned away from the hole and returned to Hiccup’s side. “It’s all right. They’re gone.”

Perhaps it was the smell that lingered, or perhaps it was just the hole itself. Even by daylight, there was something creepy about it, yawning up at them. It was still smaller than the mouth of the Red Death had been, though. The thought loomed up like a shadow in front of him, and Hiccup’s breath caught in his throat for a moment, hands tightening on his crutches until he blinked away the memories and caught hold of the moment again. A different island, different dragons. They had already won this battle.

He kept his head up and his eyes peeled as he picked his way through the village, looking for either the distinctive form of his father or the flash of white-blonde hair that would mean Elsa. He caught sight of Astrid and Carr clearing the remains of the woodshed from beside their house, but did not head in their direction. Astrid’s arm was bandaged, and anger showed itself every line of her movement.

His father’s booming voice sounded from the south end of the village, and even Toothless’s head perked up. Well, at least that answered one question. Hiccup turned south as well, skirting a second hole and very carefully crossing the ruptured trail of ground that led to it. He glanced across the treeline of the forest more from habit than anything else, and felt his heart leap in his chest as he saw Elsa emerging from the woods again.

“There you are,” he breathed. He sped up as best he could, and Toothless bounded alongside him. Elsa looked up, eyes fixing on him, and froze like a deer taking sight of a hunter. Hiccup stopped, holding up one hand. “It’s just me!” he called. “Are you all right?”

He was just about close enough to see Elsa’s nod, and though she stayed still it was at least not running away as he closed the distance to her. She had her hands cradled to her chest, palms curled inwards, and looked around wildly as Hiccup approached.

“Hey, hey,” he said, “what’s wrong?”

As he got closer, he realised that she was wet from head to toe, hair scraped back from her face and dress wet and sticking to her skin. Her cloak was drier, but even that was starting to get wet from contact with her dress. There was ice on her chest and curling up towards her throat, creeping out from where she clutched her hands.

“I am sorry,” she said, all in a rush. “I went to wash. The dirt.” She made a quick gesture to her hair with her left hand before wrapping it back around her right again. “I did not think... I had to. To clean it.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he said. Even if she would have been willing to take his hand, which Hiccup doubted, he was rather tangled up in crutches. “Where are the buckets?”

A look of panic fleeted over Elsa’s face. “The well?”

“Don’t worry, a bucket is a bucket,” he said. “It’s not like things can get very far on Berk. Come on, I’m going to see what my father’s bellowing at people about now.”

“I do not know,” said Elsa. She took half a step back, and the ice on her chest spread further, though whether or not she was aware of it Hiccup was not sure. “The ice.”

“You’ll be fine,” Hiccup said. Hope glimmered behind Elsa’s uncertainty, and it looked as if the ice receded just a little as she stopped pressing her hands so hard to herself. “Come on. At least we don’t have to pretend to be married any more.”

It was a weak joke, but she looked grateful for it, and Hiccup cocked his head in the general direction of his father’s voice as he took a tentative step in that direction. When Elsa followed, he felt tension leave his shoulders, and kept his pace matching hers.

“So. The river?” He glanced across to see Elsa nod. “You’re better with the cold than even most of us. I’d really thought that you were going to Astrid’s or something.”

Although baths were not so usual in winter as they were in summer – a strip wash needed less water and was quicker to get done during the cold weather – there had been a few occasions when Hiccup, Stoick or even – once – Gobber had ended up in the bath, and Elsa had discreetly made herself scarce for a couple of hours.

“I am used to it,” said Elsa.

Heating the water, that was the main problem. “Do you think we could get dragons to heat a lot of water at once for us?” said Hiccup. Elsa looked at him blankly. “For baths. We don’t get the hot pools like they do in the mountains, just the well-water. But if we make a larger metal tub...”

She was looking at him as if he was absolutely mad, and he supposed that had been rather a large step in his logic.

“Sorry. Probably something to ask Gobber about.” It had, at least, covered some distance, and as they rounded the corner of a house they came to his father, Phlegma, and three other Vikings standing around another of the Whispering Death’s holes, this one without planks or stakes around it.

It was Phlegma who saw him first, shading her eyes and then raising the same hand in acknowledgement. “Hiccup.”

“Good morning,” he said to them all, hobbling up to stand in something resembling the same circle. Elsa hung back a couple of steps, Toothless padding over to sniff at the edge of the tunnel. “Gobber said you were up here.”

He didn’t open with offering help, not just because that was a fine way to insult viking pride but also because he wasn’t wholly sure if what help he could actually be just at the moment.

“Quite the mess,” said Umbra, with a nod to the hole at their feet.

“Not so bad as we’ve seen before,” said Stoick, with a warning glance. Umbra did not seem particularly angry, though, just resigned. “And we’ve no injuries worse than burns, isn’t that right?” He glanced to Phlegma, who nodded. “There’ve been no collapses yet, we’re just discussing the tunnels.”

“Well, the best thing to do would be to have a look, right?” said Hiccup immediately.

Stoick sighed. Over the years, Hiccup had become very good at reading his father’s sighs, and this one meant that he had just spent quite some time trying to argue against whatever it was that Hiccup had just publicly suggested.

“We don’t know how stable they are,” Stoick said.

“And we won’t know until someone goes down and has a look,” Phlegma replied, folding her arms across her chest. It was the sort of parental tone with which Hiccup was very familiar, and he had to bite the inside of his lip at Stoick’s frustrated expression on being on the receiving end of it. “Come now, chief. Just so far as to see how it’s holding up.”

“Fine,” said Stoick heavily. He nodded to the other of the men. “Holsen, tie off some of that rope. I’ll take it with me.”

“Chief, if we’re looking to see whether it should be shored up, it should really be me heading down,” said Nightmane Holsen. He was one of the best that Berk had when it came to structuring timbers for houses, helping to build ones that had stood even against what dragons had been able to throw at them. As long as the timbers stood, the house could be rebuilt; rooves and even walls were more replaceable than the structures that held them.

Stoick, however, was busy giving Hiccup a warning look. Curiosity was itching beneath Hiccup’s skin, but while on crutches even he had to admit that it would be a bad idea to go down into the tunnel. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not planning on it.”

At which point, with a growl, Toothless hopped down into the dark mouth of the tunnel.

“All right, _now_ I’m planning on it.”

“Hiccup...”

“If he’s going into the tunnels, I’m going into the tunnels,” said Hiccup. “It’s not that deep, and if anything should happen I have had far worse moments for my dignity than being hauled out with a rope under my arms. Nightmane can think about the shoring, I’ll think about the dragons. And we need to make sure these don’t connect to the cave system,” he added as the thought occurred to him. Stoick’s frown deepened. “Which is absolutely not my job. But I do really need to get Toothless out.”

He stepped up to the edge before anyone could stop him and looked over. The ground was thick and muddy, the bedrock close to the surface this close to the village even if it would drop away as the soil became thicker in the Wildlands. Although at first glance the hole had seemed vertical, the edge furthest from the cracked ground was actually a steep slope, not that much worse than some of the gullies and places that Hiccup had been sliding around in over the last few years.

With two feet, admittedly.

“Hiccup–” Stoick began, and this was going to end in Hiccup disobeying his father either way, so he supposed that he might as well do it before Stoick had actually spoken the words aloud and when he might have some plausible deniability.

“Don’t worry, Dad. We can talk about it later.” With what he hoped was a blithe smile, he stepped out onto the slope.

He heard Stoick continue, possibly cursing, but was too busy digging the feet of his crutches into the ground then, after only a few heartbeats, giving up and hitting his backside instead. To his surprise, that worked better, and he was able to slither down the edge of the tunnel until, it a mixture of mud and dust, he scraped down to the bottom.

There was a rumble in the darkness, and if it wasn’t so distinctively a Night Fury it would have been frightening, but Hiccup just set about getting back to his feet once again. His leggings had survived the slide, as had his boot, which meant that in all honesty he had been up to far worse than this.

“Hang on,” called Holsen from above. “I’m coming down.”

A length of rope unfurled itself beside Hiccup, who took a few steps away from the edge. He squinted upwards, but could not make out anything more than vague silhouettes against the pearl-grey sky. “I’m all right!” he called up. “Toothless is here with me.”

His father said something not audible from the bottom of the shaft, and Phlegma laughed. Then someone very clearly called, “Wait!” and Hiccup jumped; he tilted his head to the side and tried to see who it was that was climbing over the edge, but could not do much more than get out of the way as they slid down the slope rather faster than he had done, hitting the ground with a yelp that definitely would not have come from Holsen.

Not all that surprised, Hiccup held out his hand to help Elsa up. “Sorry,” he said. “Should have warned you I wasn’t going for an elegant way down.”

Elsa went to take his hand, then caught herself. Before she could pull away, Hiccup grabbed hold and tugged her upright, ignoring the downright icy touch of her fingers. There was a grunt of exertion above them, and both of them backed away just in time for Holsen to join them, one hand on the rope as he scrambled down.

Huffing, he brushed off his hands as he straightened up and looked them both over. “We’re all safely down,” he called up the shaft again, then shook his head. “You really have no fear, do you? Suppose it’s not so bad after a dragon.”

Toothless snorted and nuzzled against the small of Hiccup’s back, with his usual sense of timing. Holsen looked startled, eyes scanning the darkness and hand going towards his belt, and Hiccup hastily stepped aside so that his eyes would be visible in the dark. “It’s just him. Looks like he wanted to check this out as well.” Seeing the wariness still in Holsen’s eyes, Hiccup took a deep breath. “He fought the Whispering Deaths last night as well. Maybe it’s just... that.”

“Ah,” said Holsen, with a nod. He untucked a torch from the back of his belt and started fumbling at a pouch in his waist. “Here, let me get this lit.”

“Let me,” said Hiccup, leaning one crutch against himself so that he could extend one hand for the torch. Holsen looked uncertain, then passed it over when Hiccup made a more insistent gesture with his hand. “There we go. Come on, bud.”

He held the torch at arm’s length, away from them all, and pointed it towards the ground right in front of Toothless. Toothless sucked in a breath, the sound far louder than Hiccup had expected in the tunnel, then fired a tight puff of purple-white fire that struck the very tip of the torch and licked around it in an instant.

“And... torch.” Hiccup quickly straightened it up, and handed it back to Holsen again. “Quicker than flint and steel.”

Holsen actually looked impressed as he took back the torch, examining it at first as if he was expecting it to explode or otherwise do something strange, then nodding to both Hiccup and Toothless. “Well, thank you. That’s not bad at all. Come on, then, let’s check this tunnel out for your father, see if it’s likely to hold.”

And, Hiccup hoped, figure out just what Toothless had wanted in coming down here in the first place. “Sounds like a plan.”


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: Dragon funerals in this chapter.

The tunnel was less creepy than Hiccup would have expected. It was almost perfectly circular, the floor uneven, but the walls seemed solid enough. Holsen was more concerned about the roof, which had cracked in places, but shoring up caves had practically been a pastime for the early settlers of Berk, and they knew their craft well even now. Toothless sniffed into any shadowed crevice, growled at stray spines that were embedded in the limestone floor, and reared up at the sight of something hanging ghostlike from the roof. Holsen drew back, taking the torch with him, as it rippled silvery in the firelight.

“Hold!” said Hiccup. “Hold it.” He went to hold up a hand, catching himself just before he dropped his crutch. “Bring that light closer.”

“What is that?” Holsen said. He took two steps forwards, and Hiccup had to give him a pointed look to get him to come close enough for them to see.

A sheet of the material, onion-skin translucent but as thick as parchment, hung from the rough stone of the ceiling. It was patterned in irregular blocks, and hung ragged at the edges. Shifting his weight, Hiccup went to pull it down.

“No!” said Holsen, going to grab his arm.

The material came away easily in his hand. “It’s all right,” said Hiccup. It was cool and dry, rough to the touch. “I think...” He held it up to the light, turning it over in his hands, even as Toothless gave a long low growl again. “I think it’s skin.”

“It’s a bad sign, is what it is,” said Holsen darkly. “Better to leave it down here.”

“If I do that, it’ll just look like a bad sign to whoever comes down here next,” said Hiccup. He tried to work out a way to get both hands free, and wobbled in place instead. “Damn it!”

“Let me,” said Elsa. She stepped in from the edge of the firelight and took the sheet of shed dragonskin from his hands, folding it up as if it were a blanket. It looked surreal, ghostly, and considering what Whispering Deaths could do Hiccup was not all that sure that it was not a bad omen. “Do you want me to carry it?”

“Are you sure?” he could not help a pang of guilt. “I mean, I can put it over my shoulder or something.”

Elsa looked over at Toothless, who had skulked back almost out of the light, leaving his eyes glittering green against blackness. “I do not think that he likes it.”

“I’m not sure that I blame him,” Hiccup admitted. Gobber had said that dragons shed like snakes or lizards, but that had been too early in the summer for Hiccup to see it in the arena. “But thank you.” He turned to Holsen and regarded him as levelly as he could manage. “How’s the ceiling looking around here?”

Holsen looked at him dumbly for a moment. He was a big man, heavy-set, with his dark beard fully braided so that it could not catch in the tools which he used. Hiccup barely came up to his chest and could probably be tucked easily under one of his arms. “The, uh, ceiling,” he said. He raised the torch to look at the limestone above them, deep furrows running through it. “I think the roof is closer to the surface here. It might need supports.”

Like mines, Hiccup supposed, although the Wildlands were too dangerous for them to have done that in many years. “We should probably check whether any of these go under houses.”

“There are a few, by the direction of the tunnels.”

“If the worst happens, we can move people out of their houses for the time being,” said Hiccup. “Wait until it’s safe again.”

It wasn’t that people didn’t get attached to their homes. Particularly stubborn families – and to be fair, that described most of Berk – might have lived in the same place for generations, but the houses themselves tended to come and go as wood repeatedly proved how flammable it was. If people had things that mattered to them above all others, they carried them on their person, or kept them in solid metal chests that would not burn. Houses were replaceable, home went with you.

Holsen nodded. “I suppose so. And at least we know these ones are here.”

That was, of course, the difficulty with limestone. Sinkholes like the one where Hiccup had first met Elsa were not exactly confined to the Wildlands, and there had been collapses in the past. Luckily, it had been many years since there had been any deaths from them.

“Exactly,” said Hiccup. “Right, let’s go report that to my father, and I can stop making him worry overmuch about what I’m doing down here.”

He put a hand on Toothless’s back; Toothless jumped, shrank away, and looked Hiccup over with huge eyes before quietly chirping and rubbing against Hiccup’s hand instead. The air in the tunnel was cool and flowing freely, but perhaps to dragons it smelt far more of Whispering Death than it ever could to humans.

“All right, bud, all right. We’re going. You good?” he said to Holsen.

It only really occurred to him on his way back to the entrance to the tunnel that Holsen had only looked at him dubiously over the Whispering Death skin, and that had been more a matter of omens and the supernatural than it had been about whether Hiccup was actually in his right mind. It made him feel almost uncomfortable, like a weight on his shoulders that he couldn’t shake off as he made his way back.

Even the weak sunlight made him squint as they reached the curve of the tunnel again, and suddenly twenty feet or so was an awful lot deeper than it had seemed when he had slid down in the first place. Today was not exactly turning out to be full of good ideas.

“Hiccup?” called Stoick from above, probably as soon as the torch came into view. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” he replied, trying not to sound too exasperated. There were worse situations to be in than standing uninjured at the bottom of a steep slope, after all. He turned to Elsa. “You can probably climb that, right?”

The sinkhole might not have been as deep, but he had seen her make her way out of that with a broken ankle. Now she looked over the wall, then to the rope, and nodded. “I think so.”

“All right. Tie the skin to the end of the rope, I guess, that’ll make it easy to get out.” He leant a crutch against himself so that he could cup one hand to his mouth. “Have you got the rope tied off up there?”

“I think I know how to tie off a rope, Hiccup,” Stoick replied. Hiccup could almost hear the scowl, which was at least an improvement on worrying.

Elsa secured the knot around the bundle of dragon-skin, looked over the wall a second time, then caught Hiccup’s eye with an expression that was pure innocence. “Earth is a soft landing,” she said.

It took all that Hiccup had not to start laughing, even as Stoick called down for Elsa to repeat whatever she had said. Wisely not doing so, Elsa unlaced her boots, slipped them off, and tied them together to put around her neck.

“Are you all right there?” said Holsen. He was still holding the torch even in the circle of daylight.

“It is easier,” Elsa replied, with a careful smile. She glanced over at Hiccup, who nodded quickly, and then brushed her hands against each other before putting one foot to the wall, bracing it at thigh-height before pushing up and catching handholds further above.

Hiccup had actually meant for there to be some use of the rope involved, but he wasn’t going to point that out now and risk distracting Elsa. The last time that he had seen her climb had been back in that sinkhole, last summer now, with only one foot. Since then he had become used to her being quiet, restrained in her movements, more like how he would imagine some sort of southern lady than a wildling. She sewed better than he did, she preferred long skirts and long sleeves, and he had quickly become so used to her fast eating and skittishness around food that he barely noticed it any more. Seeing her climb again, fluidly, easily, was like a weight on his chest.

She shifted her handholds as she went, fingers and feet searching out the little hollows and projections in the rock, and yelped when she got within reach of the top and Stoick grabbed her under the shoulders to pull her out. Some warning would probably have been better, but he meant well.

“Maybe you should go next,” said Hiccup, with a wave to the rope. Holsen looked dubious and didn’t step any closer, which was at least a refreshing return to the status quo if not particularly helpful at that moment. “I’ve got Toothless with me.”

Which was, of course, the problem. Getting a human out of a tunnel was a simple matter of a rope if, like Hiccup, they could not really climb at the moment. Getting a dragon out of a tunnel was not quite so simple; the other end would be just as steep as this, to judge by what they had seen from the surface, and they would need a lot more people if they hoped to get Toothless out by brute strength. Hiccup would rather avoid that option.

“I think I’d rather see you safely out first, Hiccup,” Holsen said, with a slight nod that was almost certainly in the direction of Hiccup’s leg.

Hiccup looked at Toothless, who was sniffing at the base of the slope and pointedly avoiding the bundle of Whispering Death skin. “Come on, Toothless. I want to see _you_ get out before I do the same.”

He made his way over and gave Toothless a nudge with one hand. Rumbling, Toothless turned to Hiccup and cocked his head.

“Go on.” Hiccup pointed up the slope. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Toothless looked up at the slope again, and narrowed his eyes slightly. His wings flared, and Hiccup stepped out of the way as he hunkered down, rear end wiggling in place.

“Dad, look out!” called Hiccup at the last minute.

With a thrust of his legs and a pulse of his wings that was like a punch in the air, Toothless leapt up the slope. There was an aching moment when his paws scrabbled at the edge, then he got his wings proud of the surface and flared them fully, wider than the tunnel and blocking out most of the light. One flap, and he was clear, disappearing beyond the tunnel entrance with a flick of his tail before turning to stick his head back down again and bark a sound in Hiccup’s direction.

Hiccup gave a soft, relieved laugh. “All right, bud. I’m coming.”

With somewhat less brute force needed to move him, he was not so worried about that option. Hiccup considered the rope, with its bundle of Whispering Death skin, then knelt down and put his crutches aside. He undid the knot, pulled out the skin, and did up the rope in a loop a couple of feet across.

“Good thing I’m used to not having dignity,” he muttered to himself, before realising that Toothless was not close enough to hear and he probably looked like an idiot. With a sigh, Hiccup slipped into the loop, sitting in it like a swing, and pulled both the crutches and the shed skin into his lap. “All right,” he shouted up to the silhouette of his father visible at the entrance. “Bring me up.”

It was still a little embarrassing to need to be pulled out of the tunnel like a sack of cabbages, but at least this time around he could blame his foot. Hiccup fended off the wall of the tunnel with one hand as he was pulled up, steady tugs on the rope giving way to his father’s relieved face and arms slipping under his shoulders to drag him to a seated position on the ground.

“You’re sure that you’re all right?” said Stoick, crouching down with his hands on Hiccup’s shoulders.

Hiccup put one of his hands over his father’s. “I’m _fine_ , Dad. There’s no sign of any Whispering Deaths down there, no entrances to caves. Holsen’s looked at the structure.” He let go of his father’s hand to pull himself free of the rope, which Phlegma pulled away with a wry smile and threw down the rope once again. “And don’t worry, I’m not planning on going down any of the others.”

“Good.” Stoick stood up, letting Hiccup get his own foot under him and drag his crutches back into the mix. “That’ll save me from telling you not to. What is that?” he added, peering at the shed skin without actually reaching out to touch it.

“Whispering Death skin. I want to talk to Gobber about it,” said Hiccup. “If there’s more in the other tunnels, or spines, we should probably get it out. If people don’t want to touch it, I–” he saw the warning look in Stoick’s eyes; “–can get one of the others to come and pick it up. If you’re all right with having it in the house, that is.”

Stoick looked over the Whispering Death skin again, then stooped to pick it up, still folded together. “I’ve seen skin before, cleared from the Arena,” he said levelly. “Though not this sort. Find a chest to keep it secure in.”

“Thank you,” Hiccup said, and meant it for more than just the dragon skin. He was mentally contemplating whether he should tuck the skin under his arm when Elsa stepped up, wearing shoes once again, and slipped the skin out of his hands.

Behind them, with a grunt, Holsen climbed out of the tunnel as well. He brushed himself off as he got to his feet, pausing to give Hiccup a nod that was tinged with respect.

As Phlegma waved to one of the men to start wrapping up the rope, Hiccup saw the shift in his father’s demeanour, the chief coming out once again. He stepped back, and would have raised his hands had he been able.

“I get it,” said Hiccup. “You guys have this under control; I’ll head home. But seriously, if there’s any more Whispering Death skin, or spines, or anything, just get one of the other dragon riders.”

“We will,” Stoick said. “Now go.” He glanced over Elsa, and the way that his lips pressed together might well have been over the wet clothes that she still wore. It was not immediately obvious, with the dark fabric, but a second glance was all too telling. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Come on,” said Hiccup, turning to Elsa. “Let’s go find those buckets.”

 

 

 

 

 

The buckets were beside the well, where Elsa must have left them, and she looked far more relieved to see them than two contraptions of wood and iron had ever deserved. She filled them up, and they returned home with both water and dragon skin in tow, even if Toothless stayed a few paces away and looked at them suspiciously.

“I will put _that_ somewhere safe,” said Hiccup, nodding to the skin, as he shouldered open the door and managed not to stagger in with it. Elsa set the buckets aside, but kept a cautious hold on the skin for a moment longer. Leaning on the wall, Hiccup gestured it, then rolled it up and tucked it into his belt like a scroll. It felt loose, but was probably good enough for a flight of stairs. “There we go. I should let you get changed. And then get a message to Gothi to see if she’ll look over the dragons. I’m guessing you’d rather be wearing your bracelets again?”

Elsa nodded, the fingers of her left hand brushing over her right wrist at Hiccup’s words.

“Don’t worry, everything’s calmed down today. She’ll probably be about to check on people anyway.” After any major dragon attack, Gothi would usually descend to the village, to oversee the work of anyone else with some healing skills and to tend to any of the most badly injured herself. Hiccup wasn’t sure whether the wounds of dragons could be – or would need to be – stitched together, but doubtless she would know.

“Thank you,” said Elsa quietly.

She turned to her own room, and Hiccup made his way upstairs as Toothless snuffled round the main room again. Wanting his foot back was getting infuriating, but he had no doubt that Gobber knew what he was talking about when it came to prosthetics.

He sat down on his bed and spread out the Whispering Death skin, bone-coloured-translucent and dry to the touch. It felt like old parchment, but in better light the pattern of scales was clearer, uneven blocks the size of Hiccup’s palm surrounding a large protruding semi-sphere. Hiccup carefully smoothed it out; it was a handspan across, bulbous, and for a moment he wondered if it was some strange way of shedding a spine before realising, with a tightening around his throat, that it had to be from one of the eyes.

It was too much. Hiccup folded up the skin with shaking hands and put it in his clothes-chest, before grabbing some scraps of parchment and a charcoal pencil off the side, holding them in his mouth, and heading downstairs once again. He sank into place on the end of the table and spat everything out, wiping off the dampest of the pieces. Toothless padded over, sniffed him, then flopped to the ground with a huff and put his head on Hiccup’s remaining foot.

Hiccup looked down, and smiled. “I appreciate the sentiment.”

The door to Elsa’s room opened, and he looked up as she emerged, dressed in fresh, dry clothes and with her hair pulled back into its usual single braid. She was standing more confidently, shoulders no longer hunched over, and was the first to speak when Hiccup smiled in greeting.

“You said that Gothi should see the dragons. Do you want me to find her?”

Hiccup paused, then gathered himself and shrugged. “If you’re willing to, sure. That would be really helpful.”

“All right,” said Elsa. She closed her door carefully. “I will see you soon, then.”

It was at least a better exit than her one earlier that day, Hiccup considered as he watched Elsa go. He glanced at the parchment in front of him, his own plan to keep busy, and sighed. Perhaps she simply wanted the same. Growing up around Vikings, who were considerably more blunt about what they wanted at any given time, had not really prepared him for trying to work out what going through Elsa’s head.

He looked down at Toothless, who had his cheek firmly pressed against Hiccup’s chin. “Well, looks like it’s just you and me for now, bud. Shall we work on this design for an actual hot bath, huh?”

 

 

 

 

 

“Here,” said Stoick. “Gobber sent this up from the forge.”

He handed over Hiccup’s leg, which looked just the same as it had done first thing that morning. Hiccup turned it over suspiciously, but could not see any changes, and set it on the table. “I’ll check for booby traps when I next wear it,” he said.

It probably should have counted as a warning sign that Stoick did not comment, and simply dragged a chair opposite Hiccup before sinking down into it. Toothless had moved when Stoick set down the basket of fish he had returned with, and Hiccup found himself sitting almost knee-to-knee with his father.

“Hiccup, we need to have a little talk,” said Stoick, in one of his serious tones.

Hiccup sighed. “What about? The holes in the village, the dead Whispering Death, the dead hatchlings, or the fact that we’re now dealing with Dagur the Deranged instead of Oswald the Agreeable?”

“We’ll get to those,” Stoick said, after only a moment’s pause, and Hiccup groaned. This was going to be one of those conversations that started with a list; usually those had been related to how Hiccup had most recently screwed things up, but at least he could honestly say that most of this was not his fault. “No, Hiccup, we need to talk about this whole business of pretending to be married to Elsa.”

Perfect. Hiccup slumped down where he sat. “Ah,” he said. “That.”

“Yes, that,” said Stoick. He took off his helmet and set it on the table, then clasped his hands together in front of him. “Hiccup, this is not a conversation that any parent looks forward to having. But as you know, you are an adult now by Berk law, and that means you are of... a marriageable age.”

“I’m not looking to do so any time soon, though,” Hiccup said quickly.

Stoick looked at him levelly, and Hiccup wished that he could sink further down. “From this summer, there will be more visits to other islands. The Shivering Shores. The Iron Isle. Arendelle, this year, as well.”

At least Hiccup had never done anything that had ended with him being stopped from going to the Arendelle treaty signings. It had probably helped that the princess was only a year older than him, and both King and Chief had been willing to let the children run around the castle even when they were six and seven years old. Even at the last signing, three years ago, they had been allowed to roam. Of course, nobody could have predicted that the princess for the last signing would be the Queen for this one.

Hiccup held his tongue.

“You have to know, Hiccup, that what you do, you do as the son of a chief. You are a representative of this island, and of me, and that means that you can’t just do and say these impulsive things.”

“I know, Dad,” said Hiccup. It sounded more defensive than he had intended, and a little bit pleading. He took a deep breath. “What happened with Dagur... caught me by surprise. It’s hardly as if this is going to be happening on a regular basis!”

“Regular, perhaps not, but there is a chance this will happen again. There will be women of marriageable age on these islands, and you are the son of a chief, one day to be chief yourself. People will be aware of that.”

Hiccup stared at his father for a moment, trying to get his head around the idea, before disbelieving laughter burst from him. “You think someone is going to try to... trap me into marriage?”

“There is a chance that somebody might try to take advantage of your position,” said Stoick. “It is not unheard of for young chiefs to face such things. And if somebody were to...” he visibly searched for words for a moment, “ _proposition_ you,” the word was even stranger coming from Stoick than it had felt when Hiccup said it, “then you need to respond to them more calmly than by lying to them. The fact that you were not caught in your deception does not matter,” added Stoick, one hand curling to a fist on his knee. “It was not the thing to have said. And, of course, there is now the risk that the Berserkers will spread this story to other tribes.”

Hiccup winced. He had not thought that far, had not really thought at all when the words had spilled from his mouth. “Well, if so, then at least it should stop people looking to marry me,” he said. His father sighed. “I’m sorry, Dad, I don’t know what else to say right now. I won’t be doing the same thing again, though. It wasn’t exactly fun to pretend to be married to Elsa.”

Having to scan everything that he said to make sure that it fitted in with the lie that they had told had become exhausting. Acting differently every time that he was around both Elsa and Dagur had been painful. And sleeping on the floor had not exactly been the best experience of his life.

“Hiccup...”

“Dad, please,” said Hiccup. “This visit went wrong in a lot of ways, and I’m sorry that I contributed to that. I’m certainly not planning on repeating it.”

Stoick heaved a sigh, which might just have meant that he was putting aside the rest of the conversation for a later date. For now, Hiccup would take that. “Very well. Now, the matter of the Whispering Death damage. The other tunnels have been checked, and there is one house which will need shoring beneath. And what were you saying about corpses?”

Not that it was much of a better conversation than propriety, but at least it was less embarrassing. “One of the Whispering Deaths is in the cove. Toothless and Astrid brought it down.” He could feel the words hanging unsaid in the air, and from the way that his father waited he was not alone. “And two of the hatchlings. The Nightmares.”

“I’m sorry,” said Stoick, the words more steady than tender but still meant. “I truly am. I can have some men go in and break up the carcass for you. That passage you found was a bit too narrow, but we can send some rope ladders down over the top.”

“I think I’d rather have the large dragons bring it out,” Hiccup said. The words wobbled slightly, and he gripped the edge of the table with one hand. The cove was still _theirs_ , his and Toothless’s and Elsa’s and the other dragons and their riders just about allowed in. Nobody else had been in there even now. He swallowed. “It’ll be... easier.”

For whom, he did not say.

Stoick nodded. “Very well.”

“And we can’t use the meat,” said Hiccup. “Or any part of the hatchlings.” After speaking with Gobber, he knew that there would have to be a compromise, and could only hope that he could find the right form for it to take. He would have preferred to leave the corpse entirely untouched, the skin and teeth and spines left all together to be floated out to sea, but part of him knew that was not an option. Not yet, at least.

For now, though, Stoick nodded. “We can do that.”

 

 

 

 

 

One day, Hiccup knew, he would have to go back to Dragon Island. It was unlikely that it would fill in any of the gaps in his memory, but perhaps it would give him something other than flashes of fire and terror, the sensation of falling into heat so strong that it was like he was breathing it in. The Whispering Death corpse was another reminder; he could not even imagine what would have happened with the Red Death hatchlings and the vast, unbelievable bulk of the adult.

On returning to the house, Gobber announced that he had lengthened Hiccup’s prosthetic by a fraction, to match his height. Hiccup’s immediate response was to burst into laughter, but it died on his lips when he realised that Gobber was actually _serious_ , and turned to confusion instead. Only when Gobber threatened to start making marks on the doorframe again did Hiccup relent.

There was a flurry of activity as the tunnels were shored up, the entrances packed in with the soil that the Whispering Deaths had flung aside. Berk knew well how to respond to dragon attacks; Hiccup just wished that they did not have to use that knowledge any more.

It was not until the following day, with his foot back on even if he was using his cane, that he directed the twins and Snotlout into getting the Whispering Death carcass out of the cove. There were men and women waiting, with sharp axes and Spitelout leading them, but Hiccup had to turn away before they set to work. He would not have been able to watch.

Most of the village were not told about the hatchlings, and to be frank Hiccup was more comfortable with it being that way. With the heavy thunk of metal in flesh loud in his ears, he and Astrid retrieved the wrapped-up bodies of the hatchlings and carried them out of the cove.

Astrid did not speak to him. Her arm was bandaged, burns hidden, but her eyes were grim and all-too-often set on the distant horizon. All the same, she held the hatchling tenderly.

It was not as if they could have a boat for them; even for one of their dragons that would have been impossible to argue, let alone a hatchling that had not yet even been named. Even children struggled to earn boats in harder years.

The Ingermans sailed, though, and Fishlegs could lash a basic raft together. The hatchlings seemed to weigh nothing at all, and Hiccup shifted the one in his arms, going to remove the blanket as the six of them stood on the cold beach around the slip of a raft.

“No,” said Astrid sharply. “Let them have the blankets.”

It had not frozen overnight, but it had been cold enough that there was no smell of decay about the hatchlings. They had still been ripped apart, though, Hiccup had seen enough to know that. “All right,” he said.

For a moment, he feared that the raft would not hold the weight of both, but it steadied out again and Hiccup gave a sigh of relief. Astrid took the other side of the raft to hold it steady, and Snotlout waded out to join them with a canteen of Monstrous Nightmare saliva, collected under Hiccup’s request while Hookfang huffed and rumbled happily at the attention.

It took effort to make a funeral boat that would burn. A raft would be near-impossible. But Monstrous Nightmare gel should help speed it along.

“All right,” said Hiccup, as Snotlout poured the saliva over both of the blanket-wrapped forms. “Let’s get this out to sea, and I’ll light it once it’s at a safe distance.”

Astrid looked up, and for a moment Hiccup thought that she was going to argue with him, perhaps even demand that she be the one to light the pyre. Then pain flashed across her expression, and she looked down at the bundles once again.

“Come on,” he said. They waded out further, until the shelf of the beach fell away and the currents picked up, and gave the raft a push that sent it out. Hiccup had deliberately chosen a time when the tide would be going out, and a point on the beach where the currents would carry the raft away as quickly as possible. As it was, he felt it tug out of his hands, and within moments it was well away.

He turned to wade back to shore, the water so cold that his legs were going numb. Snotlout had already splashed his way to shore, but Astrid stood on the edge of the shelf, watching the hatchlings drift away. The words to call her back died on Hiccup’s tongue; this was all but a funeral, and even the twins were looking sombre.

His lone boot waited for him on shore, and he leant on Toothless to put it on. Fishlegs handed him a wooden torch, the head soaked in Nightmare gel as well, and Hiccup pulled himself into the saddle once again. None of them save Astrid were that good with a bow and arrow yet, truth be told, and it did feel like a step too far to use such a human funerary tradition for the dragons.

Not yet.

Toothless was silent beneath him as they took off, covering the distance to the raft in a few smooth strokes of his wings. Hiccup glanced back to the shore, where the others stood with their dragons, shading their eyes against the weak sunlight and the strong wind. In the water, Astrid continued her vigil.

“Come on, bud,” said Hiccup quietly. He held the torch in front of Toothless as they pulled up to hover above the raft. “Light it up for me.”

He could feel the shift beneath him, if he concentrated, as Toothless prepared to breathe his fire. The build of muscles and air, and even with his eyes closed and his ears plugged Hiccup thought that he would have known the exact moment that the flame left Toothless’s mouth, enveloping the torch and setting it easily alight.

As it was, he tried not to look into the flames for too long, and glanced down at the raft. They would have to do it in one swoop, he knew, the raft too low for them to hover right beside it. Hiccup made sure that he was secure in his seat, wrapped his left hand tightly around the ring he had made for his safety strap, and readied the torch in his right.

“Let’s send them home,” he said, so quietly that even Toothless might not have been able to hear it. Then, with a deep breath, he let them dive.

Toothless drew in his wings, and they dropped towards the surface of the water like a falling stone. With a tilt of his weight, Hiccup sent them rolling over, and reached out with the torch just in time to let it fall onto the raft in the midst of the Nightmare saliva.

It lit up with a soft rush, but Hiccup was still rolling, coming back around to the right way up as he pulled Toothless out of the dive and let him open his wings once again. They pulled into the air again, and Hiccup felt a band loosen around his chest as he turned back towards the shore once again.

By the time that he landed, Astrid was wading back, hands curled into tight fists at her sides. Hiccup landed amid silence, the others looking at him with varied uncertainty and sadness, and when he looked around he was not sure that he knew what he could say to them either. “Thank you,” he chose. “It means a lot to me that you were here. I... know that you’ve all got things to be doing.”

“We should get back to Skyfire and Silversnap,” said Fishlegs, perhaps hearing the unspoken admission that Hiccup did not know what to do next. “They’ve been restless.”

Hiccup couldn’t blame them. He nodded, and Fishlegs climbed back into his saddle and was gone within moments. Snotlout and the twins followed quickly, with various mumbled explanations, and finally Hiccup looked round to see Astrid sitting on one of the rocks by the shore, bare feet dangling in front of her.

With a vague murmur to Toothless and a gesture for him to stay still, Hiccup crunched across the wet sand to stand beside Astrid. “Hey,” he said quietly.

She glanced up, stone-eyed, opened her mouth to speak but then closed it and looked away again.

“Gobber said that it was you who killed that Whispering Death. I’m sorry you were the only one with them.”

“I still had all of the dragons,” said Astrid. Her voice was thick, but anger cut beneath the surface as sharp as a knife. “I should have been able to stop them.”

“How many people used to be involved with one dragon hunt?” said Hiccup, with a wave towards the village above them. It had always been the whole village, everyone able to hold a weapon carrying one, and it was hardly as if every person had killed a dragon each time. “There’s a reason that Berk chose that as making adults. It was meant to be a challenge.”

Astrid gave him a look that was just shy of a glare, one which told him better than any words that he was saying the wrong thing. He wished that he knew what the right thing was. Instead, Hiccup sighed, and sat down on the rock beside Astrid. The curve of it meant that he was almost at a right angle to her, but at least they were shoulder-to-shoulder.

“You did the right thing,” he said. “You saved the others. And nobody will forget that.”

Her shoulders slumped, and her head bowed, but Astrid turned her head away pointedly. With a glance to make sure that Stormfly, at least, would stay behind, Hiccup got to his feet and walked over to Toothless once again. Whatever he could think of to say, Astrid did not want to hear it, nor say anything herself.

“I’ll see you later,” said Hiccup, as he reached Toothless’s side. In the distance, the fire of the raft was still visible against the dull blue-grey of the see. “Be sure to dry off.”

Practical words, perhaps, Astrid would feel more comfortable with. All the same, he caught Stormfly’s eye and nodded towards her rider, hoping that she would get the idea and offer what comfort Astrid might actually accept. Whether by accident or not, Stormfly stood up and walked over to Astrid, chirping a greeting as she did so.

Hiccup waited just long enough to see Astrid stretch out a hand, and Stormfly rub up against it.


	34. Chapter 34

Piece by piece, Berk put itself back together in the wake of the Whispering Death attack. It was slower than it had been before the fall of the Red Death, both less frantic and less certain, the effects of a different species of dragon writ large across the town. It seemed to be accepted, though, that it had been a one-off, and despite Mildew’s complaints about dragons in the centre of the village he was not listened to any more. Frustrating though the line between _our dragons_ and _not our dragons_ was, Hiccup was willing to use it, at least for the time being.

Astrid kept busy, Hiccup could not help but notice, helping Carr rebuild the woodshed. It was built similarly to before, but this time the door was left off. He wondered whether that was making a point. Within a few days, it was as if the Whispering Deaths had not happened, save for the clean new stones in some parts of the streets and the dragonshaw that he saw people working on. The carved dragon bone was one of their trading staples when Johann came to visit, and it was probably less than a moon until he would come to their shores for the first time of the year. At least something good could come from the Whispering Death, he told himself.

The weather improved marginally, the ground continuing to thaw, and Stoick kept up his insistence that Hiccup should keep training with a sword and, on those occasions that he was apparently feeling optimistic, a shield as well. Hiccup started to escape to the academy whenever he saw his father eyeing the weapons on the wall, with various dragon-related excuses along the way.

“We really don’t need this stuff up here any more,” he said to Elsa, as they stood in the door of the armoury. “It’s too much work to keep it in condition. And we could use this space for something else.”

He was trying not to let it colour his thoughts that he was missing having a workshop. But somewhere to store bridles and spare leather, barrels of dried fish, perhaps even oils and the mixes of herbs that could be used when they were injured or sick. It had to be better than leaving things all over the island.

Elsa carefully stepped around one of the piles of shields, and tested the edge of an axe with her thumb. “There is a lot here.”

“We trained a batch of people up here every year. Two, four, six,” said Hiccup. “However many were turning fourteen that year.”

“To fight?”

He sighed. “To fight dragons.” Some of these weapons had almost certainly been used over the years to injure dragons, maybe even to kill them. Astrid had been using her own axe when she had injured Stormfly, but she had been carrying one of this armoury’s shields when she had knocked out Barf and Belch.

Sometimes it felt as if that had been a long time ago. Too often, it felt as if it was not long enough.

“Come on,” said Hiccup, making his decision. “Let’s start getting stuff out of here. We can get the others to help move it down to the village.”

Much of the iron was poor quality; it could be repurposed easily enough. The shields were sturdy, and always useful, and rope was rope no matter what it had been used for. Hiccup grabbed the first of the shields, carried it a few paces outside, and set it on the ground. It didn’t look as dramatic as it had in his head.

“You are sure?” said Elsa, even as she rolled up her sleeves.

“Oh, I think the harder part will be making sure the twins don’t steal anything.”

That made her smile, and she joined him in moving out the pile of shields before starting on dragging out the first of the heavy wooden racks of weapons. The weather was cool but clear, and Toothless sat by the wall to watch them, occasionally pausing to scratch his side or nibble at his claws. Well, at least supervision was better than interference.

“You have so much iron here,” Elsa said. “They do not have this, in the Wildlands.”

Hiccup’s ears pricked up at the word, and he looked up over the weapons rack as they got it clear of the doorway. In the wake of the Berserkers, Stoick had finally conceded to talk to Burplout and Pinebolt about Elsa’s past, and though she had fretted for a day it had seemed like a weight had been lifted from her since. “Really?”

“They cannot mine it.” Elsa timed her words between the pushes of the rack across the ground. “They do not have a smith. What they have is stolen, from Vikings mostly.”

Arendelle was harder to get to, from the Wildlands. Then again, if Arendellen guards met with Wildlings, they were almost certain to not live to tell the tale; at least Viking patrols or hunters had a fair chance. Berk lost supplies from the village, while Arendelle lost people with everything that they carried.

“Well, that explains your knife, I guess,” said Hiccup, thinking of the rusty blade that Elsa had originally had. She smiled sheepishly. “Thank, well, Gronckles I guess, for Gronckle iron.” It seemed rust-proof, hardly in need of sharpening, and Hiccup wished that they had more of it.

“That is true. What next?” Elsa brushed off her hands as she eyed up the rest of the weapons.

Once again, Hiccup was struck by how many they had. More weapons than people was not all that uncommon among Vikings groups, but Berk had to be one of the most over-armed with this many. He hoped, at least; he did not want to imagine more. “Whatever is closest to the door,” he said with a shrug. “We’ll probably still be going when the others finish their work and get here.”

In theory, they would each be turning up when they finished their individual tasks for the morning – the twins on the yak farm, Fishlegs helping his mother with the plants, Astrid and Carr finishing off the woodshed. But he had the feeling that they were going to all turn up in a clump once again. Hopefully without the female Nightmare, if they were supposed to be flying today, although he supposed that Elsa might well be willing to stay with her.

“Maybe we shouldn’t let them have any of the pie,” said Hiccup. It had taken some work to make sure Toothless didn’t eat it ahead of them.

Elsa scooped up half a dozen swords in their scabbards and gave him a playful smile. “You know, you do still owe me a pie.”

He never had managed to get round to that. Hiccup laughed as he grabbed the maces. “I probably owe you _two_ pies, considering the two kisses...”

“Who said something about pie?” said Snotlout, from behind them.

“Who said something about _kissing_ ” said Ruffnut.

“I’ll kiss someone for a pie!” Tuffnut said.

Having opened his big mouth once again, Hiccup considered whether it would be possible to lock himself into the armoury for a while until the others forgot all about this. “Why do I bother...” he muttered.

“So the marriage got that far, did it?” said Astrid. Hiccup looked at her in absolute exasperation. Although it was good to see her with her arm free of bandages and a smile back on her face again, they were hardly the words for which he would have asked her.

The twins and Fishlegs looked at Astrid in bewilderment, although Ruffnut had a glint in her eye which suggested that she knew a good story when she smelled it. Hiccup glanced over at Elsa to see her blushing furiously, now clutching the swords to her chest like protection. At least this was a rather more trivial sort of embarrassment.

“Let’s not,” Hiccup said.

Snotlout, worryingly, did not look quite so surprised. “You know, I did hear someone say that one of the Berserkers was talking about Hiccup’s wife while they were out on that dragon hunt...”

“I’m sure there was some confusion,” said Fishlegs, glancing around them all with a furrowed brow. Hiccup had known there was a reason he got on well with Fishlegs.

“I think confusion was the least of it,” Astrid said. When Hiccup narrowed his eyes at her, she just grinned at him, challenge in the cock of her head.

“It was... necessary to deal with Dagur,” said Hiccup. He did his best to wag a finger at Astrid, but it wasn’t all that easy with his arms still full of weapons. “He wasn’t going to take me seriously until he thought I was married.”

“Is that where pie came into it?” said Tuffnut. “Because I would pretend to be married to you for pie.” Ruffnut turned to stare at him. “What? Don’t say you wouldn’t. Dagur can’t tell us apart anyway.”

“You guys do appreciate that I’m well-armed, here,” Hiccup pointed out.

“Wait, were they talking about _Elsa_?” said Snotlout, both incredulously and loudly enough for the others to pay attention to him. Reaching the rest of the weapons, Hiccup put down all but one of the maces, wishing that he was more adept at looking dangerous while holding one. “I thought they were just talking out of their–”

Hiccup sighed. “Let’s _not_ ,” he repeated.

“Elsa?” Ruffnut looked between them, then snorted. “ _Please_.”

Fishlegs looked as if he had seen fish walking up onto the beach and asking for directions to the pole, eyes skipping from Hiccup to Elsa and back again. He shuffled over and leant against Meatlug, throwing an arm over her back. “All right, this is getting kind of weird.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” said Hiccup flatly. “All right, guys, you’ve had your fun. Today we’re going to be clearing out the armoury and taking everything back down to the Great Hall. We don’t need it all up here, and this space can be put to better use, all right?”

“Hiccup married,” muttered Tuffnut to himself. “Next you’ll be saying that the Yule Goat is real.”

“Clearing the armoury!” said Hiccup. “Now!”

 

 

 

 

 

He should have anticipated how long it would actually take to get the armoury cleared out. Not just because of the number of weapons that were in there, but because of the tendency of the others to get distracted by what they found. When it wasn’t the twins fighting each other, it was Astrid comparing the various forms and weights of the axes, and Hiccup had to intervene when Snotlout tried to start an axe-throwing challenge.

By the time that they had cleared the area, it had passed midday, and Hiccup shooed away the twins, Snotlout and Fishlegs with the last of the weapons before putting his face in his hands and groaning. Five random villagers would probably have taken less time, even without the assistance of the dragons.

“Good fun, aren’t they?” said Astrid finally. Dropping his hands, Hiccup looked over to her. “Sometimes you just wish you could gag them.”

“You didn’t need to tell them about the ‘marriage’, you know.”

“I didn’t realise you hadn’t told them.” She gave him a push on the shoulder, not hard enough to really knock his balance. Hiccup was really trying to stay annoyed at her, but it was difficult when he was so relieved just to see her smiling and joking again. “Yeesh, you’d think you’d share the happy news.”

“Seriously.”

Astrid pushed back her hair, and her smile faded slightly, which he suspected was going to be the closest he would get to an apology. “Don’t worry, anyway. They’ll forget it by nightfall.”

They probably would, but it was still embarrassing to have them aware of what had been blurted out in the heat of the moment. At least they did not know the circumstances, he supposed. When Hiccup tried to give her a long steady look, she shrugged a shoulder and smiled again, and despite himself he grinned. “I suppose so. It’s my father who’ll remember it longer.”

With a polite clearing of her throat, Elsa stepped back out of the armoury again. She had rolled up her sleeves to help the others earlier in the day, but now she smoothed them down again, dirt under her nails and on her hands. “We are done?” she said.

“Yeah, looks like it,” said Hiccup. Now there was just a question of what to do with the space available. After trying to block out the squabbling of the others for so long, he had plenty more ideas than he had started off with. He nodded to Toothless. “Do you want a ride back?”

“I will walk. Thank you,” she said, with a bow of her head to all three of them in turn. Stormfly was out the front of the academy, in what sunshine there was, and Hiccup was fairly sure that she had been trying to have a dust bath earlier. “I will see you later.”

He pointed to the basket of food, which had managed to be forgotten in the struggle to get the twins to stop throttling each other with the coils of rope. “You should probably take the pie.”

Pausing, Elsa looked at the basket, then started laughing. She scooped it up as she left, and as she turned the corner out of sight Hiccup saw her peeling up the corner of the towel to look inside. There was probably going to be less food there by the time that she got back to the village.

With a sigh, Hiccup rubbed his cheek. “We should probably be getting back as well,” he said to Astrid. She was smiling fondly. “What?”

“I can see why Dagur believed that you were married.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” said Hiccup, remembering the mortifying first morning and the tableau which Dagur had managed to walk in on. Mercifully, there was exactly nobody else who knew about that, and he was quite sure that Elsa did not intend to tell anyone else about it either. “I do feel like I owe you an apology for that, you know.”

Astrid put one hand on her hip, turning her body to face him fully, and tossed her hair out of her eyes. “Why?”

“Well, I,” he fumbled for a good reasoning that having Elsa pretend to be his wife, kissing Elsa on the cheek, and the whole questionable two days meant that he needed to apologise to Astrid specifically. He knew why it did – a kiss after a ride on Toothless, and two more besides – but could not bring himself to say it. “You taught Elsa all about Viking weddings. That came in helpful.”

“Uh-huh,” said Astrid. Her eyes bored into him, and Hiccup felt his face heating up.

“And everything,” he said, which was of course spectacularly useful.

There was an edge of uncertainty to Astrid’s smile, as she reached up to push back her fringe. It occurred to Hiccup that _he_ had never been the one to kiss _her_ , not in all these moons, and that each time he had thought about it, he had thought for too long. He brushed his damp hands against his thighs, then stepped close to Astrid before he could lose his nerve and took hold of her shoulders.

He had just enough time to see the surprise on her face before he kissed her. She gasped, a sharp intake of breath, and he was about to pull away when he felt her grab the front of his shirt to hold him in place.

Astrid’s lips shifted against his, and Hiccup tilted his head slightly so that their noses did not bump together as he kissed her again. Or perhaps it counted as part of the same kiss, he was not sure. But Astrid’s lips caught at his lower lip, and he felt dampness on his skin from her mouth, and his knees went weak but he told himself that this was not going to end with him clinging to Astrid to stay upright because that would be _ridiculous_.

The front of his shirt was released, and then Astrid’s hands slid up to cup his jaw, warm and rough and dusty against his skin. It felt as if they were a tangle of arms, and Hiccup slid his hands down quickly, planning to rest them on Astrid’s waist until he got a handful of bird skull for his trouble. Up was not an option, Astrid’s chest was really not an option, and it was a good thing that she couldn’t see his face because he felt it grow hotter as the thought crossed his mind. He settled for the base of her ribs, realising that he could feel each breath that she took, and wondered how long it would take to kiss each fraction of her lips separately.

It probably didn’t count as one kiss any more, he thought distantly as Astrid sighed against his mouth and pressed closer to him. She pressed them chest to chest, her skirt pushing uncomfortably against his hips but her chest rather softer against his, and he had to admit that it felt good when she hitched her breath and it seemed to push them into each other.

He lost track of time, chasing a kiss around Astrid’s lips, their noses bumping once or twice before, laughing softly, he tilted his head the other way instead. Finally, though, Astrid pulled away, and Hiccup could not do anything but look at her in amazement, her cheeks flushed and fringe askew, lips parted as she looked into his eyes. He was seriously wondering whether he could kiss her again when she stepped back, hands dropping down to take hold of his forearms instead.

“Where did that come from?” she said.

“I think I’m getting the hang of this,” said Hiccup. It made no sense as an answer, he knew that as soon as the words left his lips, and he frowned at himself as Astrid started laughing. She punched him in the chest, just hard enough to make him rock in place.

“Really. And now...” she held the pause just for an instant, then took off running so fast that Hiccup did a double take. “Race you back to Berk!”

“Wha – hey! Toothless’s saddle is loose!”

Astrid turned for an instant in the doorway, shrugging. “Call it a handicap.”

Then she was gone, whistling for Stormfly, and Hiccup almost tripped over his own feet trying to run over to Toothless as well. He felt like sitting around for a while with a dopey grin, but supposed that flying was probably a better idea right about now.

 

 

 

 

 

It started to rain as Hiccup made it home, Berk’s unpredictable spring weather at its finest, and he hurried inside with Toothless grumbling behind him. The house was warm and welcoming, but he was surprised to see his father sitting at the table with a book open in front of him, frowning.

“Dad? Is everything all right?”

Stoick didn’t really get on with books. He could read well enough, of course, since he dealt in treaties not just with other Vikings but with Arendelle and their far different attitude to writing. But he preferred that which he could learn with his hands and his experience, and the small collection of books in the house sat generally untouched until Hiccup got it into his head to read them.

“I’m not sure,” said Stoick slowly. He glanced to the next page in the book, then shook his head and turned back again. He turned the book towards Hiccup. “But I remembered something that you said a few days ago, while the Berserkers were visiting.”

“I said a lot of things.” Hiccup pushed his hair back off his face and looked over at the book. On the left-hand page was a picture of a black dragon, spiked fringe on its head, with two legs and wings arching upwards. Bolts of lightning surrounded the picture, and it seemed to glare out of the page. “What was it in particular?”

“You said that Dagur was talking to you about trained Skrills,” said Stoick. “What did he say, exactly?”

It was all a little bit lost in the memories of what Dagur had said immediately afterwards, but Hiccup tried to gather his thoughts. “Uh, he was just saying that supposedly Berserkers used to train Skrills.”

“I feared as such.” Stoick heaved a sigh, gaze falling to the book again.

Hiccup slid the book out of his father’s hand, and carefully looked at the cover without losing the page. “Wait, is this _our_ Book of Dragons?” He barely needed his father to nod. Though Hiccup knew that this had been the first Book of Dragons he had seen, long ago when he was first starting to read, most of the time he had deferred to Gobber’s instead. There was more information, more pictures, more ideas to fill his mind with.

“I’ve asked Gobber to look into Bork’s notes, and see what he can find,” said Stoick. He sat back in his chair, and ran a hand over his beard. “When I was only a boy, my father’s father told me stories of Berserker armies that used Skrills like weapons. I thought it was fancy, until I remembered this.”

Skrills had been gone for nigh on two centuries now. Berk had been the main force in wiping them out, and from what Hiccup recalled it had been the main reason behind the fights that had kept hold of the two islands for the next hundred and fifty years. He skim-read the page as his father spoke.

“My grandfather – his mother came from Berserker Island. She settled here after her year viking, won the heart of the chief. But it was her,” he stabbed a finger at the book, “who added these pages.”

“These are first-hand Berserker notes, then,” said Hiccup slowly.

“Yes. They were written before my grandfather was born, which means that Skrills may still have been in living memory in those days. And here.” Stoick pointed to the bottom of the right-hand page, where the handwriting was so cramped that Hiccup had to squint to read it. “If this is true...”

“In the days before the... killing of the Skrills,” said Hiccup, “Berserkers had a method of training them. The Skrills would be... does that say harnessed? And tied to the ships. They would then fire their lightning at the will of the Berserker Captains who controlled them.”

His voice faded away as he reached the end of the page. There was no drawing to go with those words, for which he was glad; the thought of a dragon shackled into a harness made him feel sick to his stomach. They were two centuries gone, though, he told himself.

“It may have been true,” Stoick said levelly. His voice sounded leaden, though, and it made Hiccup uncomfortable just to hear it. “And the danger is that if Dagur has heard of it, he may have the idea that dragons can be trained.”

Which, of course, they could. Hiccup looked over to Toothless, who had curled up on the stairs with his head on his forepaws. “He doesn’t know that we can, though. Besides, I think that he had other things on his mind.”

Even that did not seem to distract Stoick, who was still looking at the drawing of the Skrill with a grim expression. Looking more closely, Hiccup could see that the drawing style was not like that of the rest of the Book of Dragons, and the handwriting had an uneven size which was probably to do with how much less the Berserkers read and wrote.

“We’ll be more careful as the sailing season opens up, I promise. Keep to the west, where there aren’t as likely to be boats that aren’t ours.”

Stoick waved it away. “I trust you with that. I’ll have a word with Johann when he comes, if he does see anything, but you know what he’s like for tall tales any way. No, I’m just worried what Dagur might have learnt of Skrills.”

There was an, “Aha!” from Gobber in the back bedroom, and Stoick looked up sharply. A moment later, Gobber emerged, a slim leatherbound volume cradled on his hook while he held it open with the other hand.

“Here we go,” said Gobber. He put the book down in front of Stoick, and Hiccup leant over to read as well. Bork’s tight handwriting filled the page. “There, beneath the yak stew recipe. He talked to an exiled Berserker captain out near Dragon Vine Island who said that before he had lost the favour of the chief, he had been one of the captains entrusted with control over a Skrill. The Skrills were decades old, and had been trained so that at the pressure of a blade they would fire lightning over the prow of the ship, towards the enemy. He did not know how the training had been done, because all of the Skrills had been captured and trained so long ago even in those times.”

Relief smoothed Stoick’s brow, and he removed his helmet to set it on the table. “That is good to hear, Gobber.”

“Not that you were fearing that Dagur might somehow find colony of Skrills that had survived all this time,” said Gobber, with a knowing look. “That would be ridiculous.”

“There is a Night Fury asleep on our staircase and a magic-using wildling who lives in the workshop, Gobber. Please tell me at what point ‘ridiculous’ comes into play.”

Hiccup and Gobber exchanged a look, and Gobber shrugged. On that one, Stoick probably did have a point. All the same, Hiccup splayed his hand over the book, half-covering it.

“It’ll be fine, Dad. Whatever Dagur’s heard about Skrills, I’m sure he’s heard plenty more about more ridiculous things.”

“The lad’s right, Stoick. Dagur might as well try to find a tribe of Mara to bring to his side. Skrills are long-gone, and Mara are far-off. I’d worry more about those warships he was talking about building.”

With one last long look at the books before him, Stoick nodded. He closed the Book of Dragons, and more carefully slid Bork’s notebook from under Hiccup’s hand to be returned. “Very well. We shall let Dagur the Deranged believe what tales he wishes, and wait until next year to worry about the Berserkers once again.”

“You know,” said Hiccup, “I am so glad to hear that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is the end of the _Dagur Arc_! The last bit of this fic will be the _Thawfest Arc_ , and will be less plotty and more about tying up the characterisation arcs and the overall fic (though that doesn't mean there aren't a few Chekhov's guns still being hung on the walls).


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And welcome to the Thawfest Arc! This is the last and shortest arc of this fic, and will be less plot/action heavy in favour of wrapping up some of the character arcs (and given us more set-up for the fics that come after it in the series).
> 
> Thawfest comes from the _Riders of Berk_ episode _Thawfest_ , and is a sort of spring celebration and day(s) of sports. I've done a bit of worldbuilding around it, but hopefully nothing that doesn't make sense with canon.

As was not at all uncommon on Berk, Hiccup came home soaked to the skin and with Toothless grumpily pushing him into the house so that they could both dry off sooner. What Hiccup did not expect was the relative bustle of activity that greeted him, Gobber going from one chest to another to root through, while Elsa folded clothes at the table.

“Hello?” he said.

“Ah, Hiccup! Welcome back,” said Gobber, producing a seax from the chest. “Ooh, forgot I had this one. How did collecting plants with Gothi go?”

Hiccup slipped off his well-worn cloak and hung it up. He was already developing a puddle. “Well, I got to know her staff pretty well, that’s for sure.” Beside him, Toothless made a deep gulping sound that reminded Hiccup suspiciously of laughter, and Hiccup flicked water in his direction.

“Still a bit fond of it, eh?”

He pulled off his boot and dumped the water out of it, following with wringing out his sock. “All to the shoulders, at least. I think she said – well, you know what I mean – that she was sparing my head after last year. Which was nice of her, I suppose.”

“Did you get the plants she was after?”

“I think so. She gave me some of them to keep as well,” he said, gesturing to the satchel over his shoulder. “Not sure what they are.”

“Well, I’ll have a look at them,” said Gobber, with a wave of his hook. He placed the seax at his feet to free up his hand for another rummage, and Hiccup finally dared to approach the table, slinging off his satchel. “Not on there!”

Hiccup froze, holding the satchel just inches above the table. “Why not?”

“Laundry,” said Gobber, pointing to the clothes Elsa was folding. “Unless you want to redo it.”

“Sorry.” He put the satchel onto the bench instead, and set about taking off his vest so that he could hang it by the fire to dry. “So let me guess,” he said, eyeing the knives that Gobber had already laid out on the table. “Preparing for Trader Johann? Hope he doesn’t end up off-course in this storm.”

“Oh, he’s already docked,” said Gobber casually.

“What?” Hiccup spun. “Oh, Thor, I have to get to greet him, where is he, I–”

“He is at the Great Hall, drying off,” said Gobber, in that tone he had often used when he wanted Hiccup to stop hurrying about the forge and being a danger to them both. Hiccup froze. “One of those Gronckles stole his hat before he was even off the docks. Your father is explaining to him the situation we have here now. Not that I mean the dragons are a situation,” he added, before Hiccup could protest the word. “But Johann’s going to need some talking round.”

“Does my father want me to get involved?” said Hiccup cautiously. He tried not to stand too close to the table in case he dripped on something.

“I think he’s all right. And I’m sure he can send for you if he wants you,” Gobber replied. He produced a spearhead from the depths of the chest, and examined it in the light. “Hmm, not bad. Now go on, get dried off. And take up your dry clothes _afterwards_ ,” he added without even looking up, before Hiccup could even reach towards the clothes on the table.

He held his hands up and backed away. With a grunt, Toothless lay down beside the fire and stretched forwards so that his nose was almost in it, flaps perked up and forwards.

“Don’t you scorch your saddle,” said Hiccup, with a wag of his finger. Toothless huffed, sending embers whirling.

Admitting defeat, Hiccup sloshed up to his room and peeled out of his wet clothes, relieved to be drying off even if he was probably just going to be getting wet again tomorrow. He hoped that his father would be able to deal with Trader Johann well enough. The last thing they needed was for him to go talking about an island with tamed dragons, no matter that most people would not believe a word he said. _Most people_ was not _everyone_.

In dry clothes, he trotted downstairs again, to see that Gobber must have found a particular cache of spearheads to add to the weapons already on the table.

“Let me guess, you’re after more scrap iron from Johann again?” said Hiccup.

“Unless something else catches my eye,” Gobber replied, from the depths of yet another chest. Which meant that there was only a moderate risk of him being distracted by something, and since he already had some new skivvies for the year it was not likely to be fabric. “You got your eye on anything?”

“If he’s got any bound parchment, I’ll probably try to trade for it. We’ve just got so much information.” Hiccup had used up the last of his in making Gobber’s Book of Dragons, and had been scraping and reusing scraps through the rest of the winter. Fishlegs had more, and Hiccup knew that he had been getting hold of some by doing heavy work with Meatlug from time to time, but they were both being driven by distraction for lack of it and Hiccup’s drawings were having to get smaller and smaller with time. “And three species of hatchlings to track. He said he’d get me some good-quality ink this year, as well. You going to be taking part, Elsa?” He sat down at the table, put a slate in front of him for lack of a better working surface, and began carefully arranging the wet, muddy clumps of herbs onto it. Gothi had tied each one with fine thread, but they had been doing their best to tangle during the flight back. “Never know what Johann’s going to turn up with this time.”

He had always felt that it was a little bit unfair that he got to trade ahead of the others, but Johann knew to play to Stoick’s good side. Hiccup did not think that he benefited from the same lenient trading and occasional gifts that Stoick did, but with nobody else to trade with he honestly could not be sure. And it meant that he was less likely to get trampled along the way.

Folding the last piece of clothing and scooping up what was presumably her portion of it, Elsa shook her head. “Thank you, but no. I may watch, though.”

Hiccup nodded. “Sure. It’s not as exciting as Gobber tossing around weapons might make it sound, though. We’ll have the ice-traders start coming after the equinox, as well. Though the usual one is… a lot less talkative than Johann.”

Honestly, knowing Johann, there was a fair risk that Stoick was struggling to get a word in edgeways. Hiccup had heard many stories from Johann, paid attention to few of them, and remembered fewer still. Their ice trader was more taciturn, though he didn’t seem to mind Vikings and their weapons too much.

“Don’t worry,” he added. “I’ll deflect him if he starts trying to talk to you. He honestly might not notice if you walk away.”

It would not be the first time. Elsa chuckled, although uncertainly.

“Though if you’ve got more of those truffles,” Gobber said, sticking his head up from behind the table again, “he’ll trade well for them.”

Even with her first present of them having disappeared, Stoick had not pressed to find where Elsa had gathered the truffles from Snoggletog. As prized as they were, they were so difficult to find that almost nobody searching in the first place. It was just a more efficient use of time to hunt or gather medicinal plants.

“If there is any way that I can help…” she made a slight gesture in the general direction of the woods.

“Ah, ah!” Gobber waved her to silence. “No, we’re used to handling ourselves. But if there is something that _you_ want, truffles will probably get it for you. Probably even hacksilver or jewellery,” he added, more thoughtfully.

This time, Elsa’s laugh was a little more self-deprecating. “I am quite well,” she said, though, and her voice was warm. Not for the first time in the past moons, Hiccup remembered how far she had come. He was determined that it would stay that way. “Thank you.”

“Now,” said Gobber, “let’s have a look at those plants, shall we?”

“Huh? Oh, yes,” Hiccup gathered himself and nudged the slate over. “Gothi was quite insistent. I’m going to guess that they’re something dragon-related?”

“That’s eyebright, as good for them as it is for us,” nudging the piles carefully apart with his hook, Gobber peered at the soggy bundles. “Lad’s love, either that’s for cleaning scrapes or she thinks it’s about time you grew a beard; that’s rue, helps Zipplebacks with their gas; that’s spearmint, good for a Nadder’s fire… are you really telling me you didn’t recognise spearmint?”

“I couldn’t see what Gothi was foisting on me!” he protested.

Gobber looked unconvinced. “Sure. And that honestly appears to be mud, as far as I can tell.”

“There are stalks of something in there.”

“Uh-huh.”

With a roll of his eyes, Hiccup pushed himself up again.  “I’ll get some water. There has to be a plant under there somewhere.”

  
  
  


Stoick came home late in the evening, with the distant stare that meant that Johann had indeed been talking his ear off. He reported that Johann had responded well enough to dragons, after a momentary panic and a few reminiscences, and was more than happy to sleep in one of the storerooms at the wharves with his things. With the steps from the wharves to the village, it was sometimes easier or even safer to store things down there until storms had passed.

No doubt Johann would be ready to start trading at first light. Whatever else could be said about Johann, he was dedicated to his job, and would make the most of the two days or so he had on Berk before heading on to the next island. Many people traded the same thing, or much the same sort of thing, each time; Hiccup’s work in the smithy had always been folded into Gobber’s trading, so his own offerings had usually been glass.

He rolled out of bed early, woke Toothless up with a scratch under the chin, and was dressed, holding his cane and grabbing bread out of the pantry before he heard a door open. Bread in his mouth, Hiccup stuck his head out of the pantry again, expecting a pointed look, but instead saw Elsa in her good dress and with her hair done up.

He took the bread out of his mouth again. “You know, I would worry that I was getting worse at sneaking around, but at least I can blame the foot for that.”

“It was not you,” said Elsa. On cue, Toothless padded over and nudged against her right hip until she gave in and put her arm around his shoulders. He rumbled contentedly.

“Thanks for your help, bud.”

Toothless huffed at him.

“You are going to see Johann before your father?”

“Not something that I usually manage,” Hiccup admitted. He grabbed a second small loaf of bread and tossed it in Elsa’s direction; she caught it easily with her left hand and held it to her chest as he adjusted the satchel over his shoulder. “I wanted to make sure that Johann really is all right about dragons. You still want to come?”

Elsa glanced at Toothless, smile softening, then nodded. “Yes. Is he coming also?”

“I’m not sure if leaving him behind would really be an option.” At least it didn’t sound like it was raining outside. Johann would trade come wind, rain or snow, but it did make it harder to look at some items. “Though I’ll get him to stand back, I think.”

Elsa held the door open for them on the way out, and Hiccup was pleased to see weak sunlight and pale, almost lilac-grey clouds high above them. It was good weather for flying; even the wind wasn’t too strong, something he was becoming more and more aware of with time. Long shadows still stretched from the houses, and the western sky was still dark enough for a few stars to be visible, but Hiccup knew Johann. And so did the rest of the village, to judge by the faint rumblings of activity that he could hear.

“Is Astrid still talking about Thawfest?” said Hiccup, as they skirted around a particularly muddy part of the street. Elsa’s smile said more than enough. “You don’t have to take part if you don’t want to,” he said, for far from the first time. He gestured with his cane. “I’m not exactly going to be up to snuff this year.”

“Astrid said that most people take part.”

He rolled his eyes. Berkians loved Thawfest pretty much to a man, and Hiccup could _understand_ that. It was a chance to celebrate the coming spring, to show off their skills, and to let off more than a little of the steam that had been building over the winter. But if you weren’t the sort to be skilled in fighting, running or swimming, the three mainstays of Thawfest, then it wasn’t much of a time to be a Viking. Especially if you were the son of the chief and thus being double the disappointment with every screw-up that you made.

“Astrid can exaggerate a little. Most of us can,” he said, thinking of the boasting game that Dagur had dragged him into. Even after half a moon, occasional flashes of fear or relief would strike him about everything that had happened. “Pretty much all of the children take part, but it drops off once you turn adult. People with injuries, pregnant women, people with…” he gestured to his foot again. “Plus nobody can do all of the different things. Some of them run at the same time.”

“I would be in the same age group as you, yes?”

“Yes,” said Hiccup. “Adult, but not twenty-one yet. When is your birthday, exactly?”

Lips pressed together, Elsa shrugged. “I am not sure, exactly. Summer. It was always sunny and hot. In the Wildlands, we did not bother, though.”

Birthdays could get somewhat frivolous, Hiccup had to admit. “Doesn’t matter,” he said quickly, before Elsa looked any more uncomfortable. “You’d be in the same group. Why? Thinking of beating Snotlout at the staff fighting?”

He was teasing, and Elsa laughed, but having seen her fight with one he had to admit it was a possibility. Snotlout didn’t find staffs or spears interesting; they didn’t have enough metal for his liking. “I do not think so.”

“They’ll draw for the knattleikr teams on the day, but the brännboll teams can pick in advance.” Truth be told, he couldn’t read in her expression whether she wanted to take part or not. There was something wistful there, and she hesitated sometimes when she talked about Thawfest. It wasn’t always him that brought it up, either. “They do a relay race, as well.”

And there it was, the pause again. “Perhaps.”

They reached the top of the steps down to the docks, and Hiccup groaned when he saw that all of the wood was wet. Perhaps he should have flown down, no matter how short the distance.

“Would you like to go by net?” said Elsa, pointing at one of the huge winches that they used to tote crates up and down the cliff face.

For a moment, he looked at her in astonishment. Somehow, though, it was her innocent expression that made it funnier, and Hiccup burst out laughing. “That is…” he waved at the net. “All right, that’s tempting. But no. I have two feet, even if one is metal, and I am capable of walking down some steps whether I like it or not.”

Toothless huffed in his ear, and Hiccup planted a hand on his nose to shove him back. It did not have much effect on a tonne of dragon.

“And _you_ ,” he said. “No sneaking up on Johann and startling him.”

He wasn’t going to get any promises on that count, he knew, and there was nothing to do but start making his way down the steps. It was colder in the curved northern bay where the wharves sat, sheltered from the worst of the storms by the north-west peninsula. It did keep the light out as well, though; sometimes in the winter it could go all day without seeing the sun.

Before they even got to the bottom, he could see Johann, with some temporary tables already set up and his wares being spread out on them. He was so engrossed in his work that he did not seem to notice until Hiccup cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted.

“Trader Johann! Good morning!”

Trader Johann shaded his eyes, squinting uncertainly in the general direction of the stairs, then waved. “Ah, Master Hiccup, good morning and welcome to you also! I must admit that you are the first this morning to visit my humble vess-argh…”

Unless he had renamed his boat since last visiting Berk, that meant he had just caught sight of Toothless. Hiccup put a reassuring hand on Toothless’s head and did his best to put a smile into his voice. “It’s all right, he’s with me. Come on, bud.”

Though Johann backed up from his tables a couple of steps as they approached, he did not say anything else, and his expression was more cautious than outright fearful. “And this would be the dragon about which your father told me last night. You know, it’s quite interesting, the first time that I met a dragon–”

“I’m sure that it is,” said Hiccup. “Johann, I’d like you to meet Elsa, who is new to Berk, and this is Toothless. He’s not the only dragon here now, but he was the first, I guess.”

For the first time, Johann seemed to notice that Elsa was even there. Newcomers to Berk were unusual, but not unheard-of, and only visiting three times a year meant that Johann was hardly up to date on all of the comings and goings on the island in any case. He bowed from his waist with a flourish of his hand, to her look of surprise.

“A pleasure to meet you, I am sure.” His eyes slid back to Toothless again. “So, Master Hiccup, your father tells me that nowadays dragons are quite accepted on this small island.”

“It’s been a busy few moons.” It was not worth mentioning Mildew’s discontent, or the other occasional grumbles. The Whispering Deaths had reminded Berk the difference between what dragons _had been_ and what dragons _could be_ , and as sick as it made Hiccup feel he supposed the least he could do was use it in his favour.

“Is he, ah…”

“A Night Fury, yes. Turns out they were real all along.”

Toothless stepped up to the table and sniffed curiously at one of the swords, in its scabbard, at the front of the table. His flaps cocked so high that they almost came forwards as he perked up a little higher to peer at the rest of Trader Johann’s table.

“Good… Night Fury,” said Johann uncertainly. “There’s a nice Night Fury.”

Probably not a story that he was going to be telling too often, Hiccup thought; or perhaps it would get combined with half a dozen other stories to make one spectacularly unbelievable and exciting mosaic. “He won’t hurt you,” he said. “He hasn’t hurt anyone.”

At least, not since they had shackled him. But that had been a different time, a different Berk, a different Toothless. Johann looked a little bit reassured.

“So,” he said finally. “You have beaten down the path to my door before even your chiefly father. Is there a reason for this haste?”

Business, at least, Hiccup could handle. “Yes, there is, in fact,” he said. “Parchment.”

A flicker of disappointment, possibly faked, crossed Johann’s face. “You’re sure? I could not interest you in some fine chamois leathers from the far southern islands of Pireena? Or some fine jeweller’s rouge?”

You did not make a living as Berk’s only real trading contact without knowing what people wanted. Not just the island in general; there was always scrap iron for Gobber, tool-grade material if not always good enough for weapons, and always more things that Hiccup wanted than he could ever buy.

“Well,” he said, “let’s see what you think of what I have this year.”

He usually picked through to find the blue glass from the glass beach, knowing that it sold best and that he would get the best trade for it, but this year he had been delighted to find something extra as well. Johann kept a perfectly neutral expression at the sight of the first pouch Hiccup produced and the blue glass within, but even he looked surprised when Hiccup emptied the second, small pouch into the palm of his hand.

“My word,” said Johann. “Are those amethysts you have somehow found?”

“Sadly, no,” Hiccup held his hand a little higher, so that Johann could get a better look. “But they are good quality purple glass. Don’t go pink even in strong light, and sunlight doesn’t fade the colour.”

Trying to keep a straight face again, despite the facade already having been completely shattered, Johann picked up one of the beads of glass and held it up to the thin light of the sky. “Coronan purple?”

Corona produced the finest purple dye, one that did not fade or bleach and which was surprisingly easy to bind with mordant. It was also apparently difficult to produce and thus hellishly expensive. If it could be proved, that was. “I make no promises,” said Hiccup.

It got easier from there, falling back into the routine of haggling for more or fewer sheets of parchment, Hiccup threatening to keep back some of the purple glass to get Johann to eventually offer some of the chamois as well. From the corner of his eye, he saw Elsa pick up a brooch, looking it over carefully, but Johann did not do much more than glance over. As Hiccup managed to wrangle the deal closed, he heard his father calling from halfway up the cliff, and turned to wave with a cheery smile as if he had absolutely not been caught out. He hadn’t, he told himself.

“Thank you, Johann,” he said, folding up his gains into his satchel. “I wish you well with the rest of your day.”

The sky was brightening above them, and he could hear faint chatter which meant that he had not been that far ahead of people at all. Elsa quickly put down the brooch again, gave a nod farewell to Johann – managing to get away without saying a single word to him, Hiccup realised, and was just a touch jealous – and ran a hand over Toothless’s wing as she stepped away.

“And you, Master Hiccup, and you!” said Johann. “And remind me this evening to ask you about these creatures that you call Night Furies. Perhaps I have heard something of them from other tribes, but under a different name. You know, that happens sometimes; why, I was talking to the Chief of–”

“Good day, Johann!” Hiccup grabbed Elsa by the elbow and steered her away before she could look astounded at Johann for any longer, and clicked his tongue for Toothless to follow as well. They reached the foot of the ramp just as Stoick, jogging, did the same.

Stoick gave them all an exasperated look.

“Morning, Dad!” said Hiccup cheerily, a little louder than he meant to. “Good day for trading, isn’t it?”

For a moment, Stoick drew in his breath, brows knit, then he let it out in a sigh and shook his head. “Hiccup, please, leave a note next time.”

Well, it was better than being shouted at for going out at all, and Hiccup supposed that was actually a fairly sensible response. “Sorry,” he said, meaning it rather than just out of habit. I’ll keep that in mind. Johann’s got some good weapons, though.” He jabbed his thumb in the direction of the tables behind him. “You might want to get in quick, before Gobber gets here.”

Or any of the other people on their way down the stairs to the wharves. Berk always wanted more weapons, and the ones which Hiccup and the others had recovered from the academy had not gone far to stem that tide.

With a very small shake of his head, Stoick just patted Hiccup on the shoulder and moved on. As he did so, Hiccup was struck by what a very long way up to the top of the cliff it was. For one moment, he actually considered taking the winch back up, but brushed the thought away.

He’d probably bring Toothless’s saddle next time, though.


	36. Chapter 36

They had been in the house for no time at all before Toothless bounded upstairs by himself. There was a rooting sound, and Hiccup frowned, about to call Toothless back when he reappeared at the top of the stairs with his saddle in his mouth. Hiccup took one look at him and started laughing, at which Toothless pricked up his flaps and looked more hopeful than ever.

“Yes, yes, all right,” said Hiccup. “Just let me put these down.” He caught Elsa’s eye and shrugged as if to ask what he could do. “Honestly, I think I’m more married to _him_ right now.”

“I would not tell Dagur that,” said Elsa gravely.

“For all that I would love to watch the contortions of his mind, you are probably right,” he replied, trying to keep as straight a face and not really managing. Above them, Toothless dropped the saddle with a thud and roared. Gentle for him was still not exactly quiet, and Hiccup rubbed his ear. “Yes, thank you, bud. All right, I’m coming.”

Toothless squirmed in excitement and generally made himself difficult when it came to putting his harness on, but Hiccup would not even think of being annoyed when he saw the glee on his face. He glanced at the window; the weather was improving, and he definitely wanted that larger window put in before this summer was out. Getting Toothless up and down the stairs was just awkward, even if he did remember to keep his wings tucked in.

In no time at all, though, they were in the sky again, and Hiccup took deep breaths of the cold, clear air. As much as he loved flying with the others, by himself he cut could higher and faster, pressed down to Toothless’s back and peering into the wind. They looped nose-over-tail, rolled sideways with wings tucked tightly, and caught high currents of wind to glide near-effortlessly with only the slight sound of Toothless’s wings as the wind caught them.

He was not high enough to see the whole island, not from here, but he could see the stream of people moving down to the docks to trade with Johann. There would probably be bickering over some of his items before the day was done, though he had a knack of diffusing things before they broke into outright fights.

Perhaps it was some hidden mischievous part of him, a part which he had spent many years trying to repress, that made the thought spark in his mind and the grin come to his lip. Or perhaps it was just Loki having a hand in the moment. Either way, with a touch on Toothless’s tail, Hiccup sent them plunging down towards the wharves, so close that he saw people turning, saw people’s cloaks and tunics blown aside as Toothless came past. But they were used to him, and some shouted hello; Hiccup laughed and tucked himself more tightly to Toothless’s back, watching the rising ground and feeling his body tense with anticipation.

Johann looked up. Hiccup heard him shout, saw Stoick just on the other side of the table look round as well, but then he was shifting his weight and Toothless pulled up again, swooping a bare ten feet from the ground before cutting up higher than the masts of the ships and swooping into the air again. Most likely his father did some cursing, but whether it was aloud or in his own head Hiccup did not know, and was not intending to go back and find out.

The storm must have blown itself out overnight, and the air was clear and dry again. He could see all the way to the sharp line of the horizon, not a boat to break the surface – not even the fishermen were out this early in the morning, not when Johann was around. It was safer during the middle of the day this early in the season, in any case.

It felt so good to fly. “You want to head for that horizon?” said Hiccup, shouting to Toothless against the wind. He felt, more than heard, some rumble of a response. “Come on. Let’s test your wings. How about south-west?”

There was no argument from Toothless as they wheeled around, turning almost back on themselves. They would have to fly straight, if they were going to get out of sight of Berk, but the sound simply got Hiccup’s blood thrumming in his veins, made the cold easier to ignore.

There was nothing but the sky, and the dragon, and the rider. They were part of the sky, peeling apart thin streaks of cloud, dipping low enough to see the individual swells of waves before climbing high enough that it all became one shining blue-grey surface. The island fell away behind them, sea opening out, with small outcrops of rock breaking the surface here and there.

Hiccup noted them in his head, wondering whether they were on his father’s charts, and if so how far out they were. It would do well to get a proper speed for Toothless in knots. Not that this was his top speed, those incredible bursts that split the sky in two, but even over longer distances Toothless could outstrip any of the other dragons.

It had started on a whim, but as the distance peeled away he found himself half-breathless about what might appear on the horizon, in the direction that people dared not go. These seas had been covered with the same thick fog that had surrounded Dragon Island, but Hiccup had not been lying to Dagur when he had said that the skies had cleared. Whether compasses still whirled in confusion, he did not know; he had not bought one with him to check. But perhaps there were other people out here, or at least other dragons, new islands waiting to be discovered.

The thought made him feel as breathless as the altitude. There might be new places to map, new lands to find.

Long flights did, however, have their downsides. Besides the streaming eyes and the rapidly-numbing parts of his cheekbones and forehead, there was nothing to distract his hands or, for that matter, his mind. Thoughts bubbled and roiled again: how to heat large batches of water at once; how to deal with the Berserkers in the future; other treaties his father had talked about; Things, to which Berk had not been in years; Thawfest, where he would at least have a reason to not take part, but that was only an embarrassment in its own right; everything he had been trying to juggle for weeks rumbled over and over in his brain.

Thawfest managed to make its way to the top. Astrid had been trying to talk Elsa into Thawfest; if Hiccup was honest, he would love to see her take part, but would never want to force her hand. Plenty of people didn’t. Not just pregnant women, or men like Hoark – or Hiccup himself, he supposed – with injuries that stopped them from taking part. Some of the men and women with prosthetics would take part only in the Stump Day games instead; some just were not interested or quite possibly knew that they had no chance and would rather watch than participate. The ball games were the most popular, of course, and the melee, but...

Any thoughts of whether Elsa might want to take part in the Thawfest Games were driven from Hiccup’s mind as a faint dark line appeared on the horizon. He drew Toothless up in the air, not stopping but just slowing, and blinked a few times to be sure of what he was seeing.

It was there, though. Land, and in less than an hour’s flight if he judged his altitude correctly.

“Toothless,” he breathed, not least to have someone to share it with. “Look, bud! Land!”

In the middle of the day, high above the sea, they would be visible. But Hiccup could see no boats on the water, and had not heard of anyone living in this direction. Still, it never did to be too hasty.

“Let’s take this slow, huh, bud?”

As they closed in, Hiccup drew them slowly down towards the surface of the water, where they were not so visible a black shape against a pale blue-grey sky. The island grew in front of him, far smaller than the one on which Berk stood, and as they came closer still Hiccup saw that what he had thought were cliffs were more like huge, irregular stone blocks, a few stray trees just visible atop them. There were still no boats though, and no sign of habitation on the land itself, not even the smoke that always curled in thin streaks from Berk’s houses.

If this island had been inaccessible due to the fog, he supposed, or even just hard to reach, that alone might have been enough to keep people away from it.

They came in to land on the first promontory they reached, keeping to the high land rather than the sandy beaches or the ragged sea stacks around. From here, Hiccup could see into the valley that formed the centre of the island, filled with pine trees and with no sign of movement.

“Huh,” he said, slipping out of the saddle. Toothless rumbled, still a little hunched at the shoulders. “Oh, come on, there’s no-one here. Let’s have a look around.”

Wildlings kept themselves hidden, certainly, but that was because of Berk and Arendelle constantly looking for them. Hiccup doubted any population living on a small island would have any reason to do the same. Besides, he had been approaching from the sheltered side of the island, and there had not been any sign of the fishing that would be basically essential.

He reached the edge of the first stone block and slid down the chest-deep drop to the next level. Toothless was not immediately at his shoulder, and Hiccup looked round to see him still in place, sniffing the air with narrowed eyes.

“I’m sure it smells strange,” said Hiccup, leaning his elbows on the rock and making a coaxing gesture with one hand. “Come on. Let’s have a look around, prove there’s nothing here, huh?”

With a huff, Toothless furled his wings and stalked to the edge, where Hiccup slipped a hand to scratch him under the chin.

“There we go. Much better.”

Toothless grunted in his face, which Hiccup took to be agreement. Chuckling, he turned round and continued climbing down the stone levels towards the treeline beneath. He had been in the saddle long enough to stiffen up, and wanted to know what was below the trees more than look at them from above as he would have been able to do while flying.

He found himself talking to Toothless about the particular composition of the rocks on the way down, the granite that seemed to have replaced the limestone of Berk, with the occasional pause to curse as one of his feet slipped on the rock or the thin soil that had started to appear. Finally he dipped beneath the treeline, into the familiar world of pine forest, and paused to listen for anything at all that was not him or Toothless.

Silence.

“See?” he said, rubbing Toothless’s head. “Not even a Terrible Terror. And those things get everywhere,” he added at more of a mutter.

A little disappointing, perhaps, for the first island he came across to have neither dragons nor people, but if it turned out this land was not on Viking charts then it would still be a find. He meandered between the trees, stopping as he reached a clearing. One of the pines had crashed down, pushing another ahead of it and ripping it out by the roots. Hiccup walked around the original fallen tree to see that it had not ripped up from the roots, but had broken through at the trunk, the edges blackened and rotting.

“Huh.” Hiccup frowned. “Not seen that before.”

He reached out to touch to the top of the remaining stump, only for Toothless to growl behind him. The sound was so sudden that it made him jump, and he spun to see Toothless hunkered down with his lips still drawn back and teeth extended, gleaming white.

“Hey! What’s that for?”

Toothless roared, right in his face. As the ringing sound faded from his ears, he fixed Toothless with an unimpressed expression.

“This is what you’re doing? Look, Toothless, I know it’s a new island and yes, I’m finding the silence a bit creepy as well,” he admitted. The lack of birds was the strange part. Surely every island should have birds on it? “But there’s nothing here. And I’m keeping my eyes well open, believe me.”

Toothless grunted. Hiccup looked at him for a moment, waiting to see if inspiration would strike, then gave up and shook his head. Even after all this time, it seemed, he could not figure Toothless out sometimes.

 

 

 

 

 

The weather held out on them, and though Hiccup’s stomach rumbled it was easy enough to spot mint growing in one of the better patches of sunlight that they passed through, strip off a few leaves, and chew vaguely on them as they continued making their way around the edge of the basin. From time to time Toothless would stop, a growl building in his throat, but there was never anything to see or hear. Even when he headbutted Hiccup’s back insistently, Hiccup could not figure out what he was trying to do.

“It’s mint!” he replied, waving the leaves around for effect. “Despite what Gobber might say, I _do_ know it when I see it!” Dragons really were limited in what they could eat compared to humans. Hiccup shook his head. “I know you probably can’t eat this, but it doesn’t mean I can’t. Honestly...”

If the rest of the year could be as good as this, though, he was looking forward to it. Perhaps he could bring the others out here as well; it would be a longer flight, perhaps most of a day’s travel, but they could always bring tents and food. It would keep them well away from the village, as well.

The edge of the valley curved around; it was a less extreme cliff edge on this side, curving up more gently, with broad blocks like paving stones level enough to walk on and barely two foot high. Hiccup climbed up into the sunlight, even as Toothless let out his fiercest growl yet, ripping into the air.

“Toothless!” From here, Hiccup had a good view, and there was still nothing to be seen. “Bud, seriously, there is nothing here. And I don’t think there will be eels inland.”

Once again, Toothless roared at him. He jumped up beside Hiccup and wound around him, still roaring and growling into the air. His wing buffeted Hiccup as he circled, and Hiccup stumbled out from the ring of Night Fury, spluttering indignantly.

“What? Do you think I’m going to fall off and injure myself? Have you been talking to my father?” After the foolish things he had done from dragonback over the last nine moons or so, falling off a low stone ledge was really the least his worries. “Honestly, what–” his eyes strayed upwards to the flickers of colours far above him; “–is that?”

He shaded his eyes with one hand, and put the other firmly in Toothless’s face before he could get any more roaring right in his ear. There was a stand of pine trees at the top of range of stones at the base of which Hiccup now stood, but glinting from among their deep green branches were ghostly lights, changing in colour even as Hiccup watched.

“That was mint,” he said firmly to Toothless, “and I am _not_ hallucinating. Come on, let’s check it out.”

Toothless drew in a deep breath.

With all of the dignity he could manage, Hiccup turned around and roared back, the sound feeling absolutely ridiculous coming from a human mouth even as it made his throat sore and his chest feel like it was rattling. With a look of astonishment, Toothless drew back a little, eyes opening wide and flaps dropping right down.

Hiccup folded his arms across his chest and looked stern. “See? How do you like it?” he said. He sounded like he’d swallowed gravel, but it was just a little bit worth it to see a dragon look surprised. He coughed. “All right, we’re going to need to figure out a better system than that. Now come on, let’s get up these rocks.”

Some of the climbs were far too tall for Hiccup to reach, but for every one that high there was one that was only two or three feet, and some that he could get his fingers onto the top of and scrabble for a foothold to pull himself up. His metal foot was surprisingly useful for that.

He was about halfway up when he put his hand to the edge of a rock face only for the rock to shift beneath his fingers. And it felt _wrong_ , too smooth and warm. Hiccup stumbled back, blinking fast, as Toothless leapt up behind him with a snarl and the rock _flowed_ like water, opening eyes that had not been there a moment before. Colours rippled in front of him, greys and lichen-whites giving way to red scales, and Hiccup found himself looking straight into the eyes of a dragon.

Huge yellow eyes stared him down, set on top of a long narrow snout bristling with teeth and with a single curving spine on the nose, flanked by huge scaled horns. Flaps along the dragon’s neck fluttered like leaves as it seemed to emerge from the rock, and it snarled and thick green fluid dripped from its teeth, Hiccup realised exactly what he was looking at.

“Changewing,” he said. “Toothless, I am sorry I doubted you.”

He backed up hastily, only for his metal foot to scrape down into thin air and for him to almost fall. His stomach lurched at the feeling of nothingness behind him, but he found his balance again as Toothless leapt between them flaring his wings and rearing up to shriek at the Changewing. It snarled back, lunging forward and snapping its teeth together, but Toothless did not back down.

“All right,” said Hiccup, carefully keeping his voice very level as he kept an eye on the Changewing. “Now, I am going to get into the saddle, we are going to leave, and I am going to give my dragon a very large fish when we get home. Deal?”

From behind him, there was another growl, and Hiccup felt breath against the back of his neck. Heart sinking, Hiccup turned, to see another Changewing with narrowed eyes almost close enough that he could reach out and touch the tip of its snout.

“That explains the lack of birds,” said Hiccup quietly.

He glanced down at the gap in the rocks at his feet, surprised to find that it was only a couple of feet wide. He probably would have fallen over, rather than down, had his weight gone into it. It was still not the best of thoughts, though, and his eyes snapped back up as the Changewing in front of him growled again and opened its mouth, its breath not just heavy with fish but sharp enough to make Hiccup’s eyes sting.

Toothless was pressed against his back, the Changewing leaning in from the front. Hiccup glanced down again, hoping against hope that some route of escape would make itself apparent, then frowned as a flicker of colour in the shadows caught his attention.

The Changewing was still glaring at him. Slowly, Hiccup crouched down, keeping his hands raised and hands outstretched towards the dragon. “It’s all right,” he said, in the same soothing tone he kept just for them. “I’m just going to have a look. Please don’t spit acid at me.”

Of course, they would not understand a word, but it made him feel better to ask all the same. Hiccup lowered his hands, curled them around the lip of the rock, and finally dragged his eyes away from the Changewing to look downwards.

Another of those colour-changing shapes was at the bottom of the crack in the rocks. It shifted through the colours of the rainbow as Hiccup watched, an uneven oval perhaps six inches at its longest, pulsing with light. From beside him, the Changewing growled, low and threatening, and its nails scraped against the rock right opposite Hiccup’s hands.

He remembered Meatlug in her arena pen, the other dragons in their Hatchery. “Changewing eggs,” said Hiccup softly. He looked up at the Changewing, this time with pity rather than with fear. “You thought that’s what I was after.”

Sighing, he looked down into the gap in the rocks again. It would be a tight squeeze for a hiccup, and he was pretty sure that a Changewing could not get its head down there without getting its horns stuck. For all that they were growling at him and dripping acid, Hiccup felt more pained for the Changewings than angry at them. If they had met humans before at all, it had only been to be shot at.

Another of those impulsive decisions seized him, and he reached out a hand to the Changewing. “All right, let’s make a deal,” he said. “I will help you get that egg back, and then you’re going to let Toothless and me leave. Clear?”

Naturally, it did not earn him a response.

“And I’m talking to dragons again.”

He twisted so that he was sitting on the edge of the rock, legs over the edge, and the Changewing hissed again. Toothless’s tail slapped against Hiccup’s shoulder, and he almost pitched forwards into the Changewing’s mouth.

His heart pounded in his chest. Hands starting to shake, Hiccup lowered himself carefully into the gap in the rocks, probing for footholds as he went. He was in chest-deep before he found one, just his head and shoulders exposed right in front of the Changewing’s mouth, but it wasn’t looking to bite him and he had to take that as a positive sign. He planted his right foot on the narrow ledge, squirmed down again, having to twist his legs relative to his shoulders to be able to fit at all.

“Yeah,” he said to himself. “Definitely wouldn’t be enough room for a Changewing.”

A shadow filled up above him, and he looked up with no small dread to see that, yes, the Changewing was watching him with piercing eyes. A drop of acid made its way to the tip of its jaw, dropped, and Hiccup leant aside as it splashed down on the rock beside him.

There was only going to be one way out of this now, though whether there had been many options to begin with he wasn’t really too sure. Hiccup braced his arms on either side of the narrow gap and slid down again, another four feet or so, until his metal foot came to rest right beside the egg.

“All right.” Twisting his legs again, he slid down, muscles cramping and back getting scraped by rock. He could just see the light on the rock out of the corner of his eye, and groped blindly with his left hand until he felt the warm, rough surface of the egg, distinctive against the cold granite around it.

The first time that he tried to lift it, his fingers slipped, but he gritted his teeth and grasped it so tightly that it felt like it was going to cut into his fingers. He managed to lift it high enough to press it against his leg, rolled his hand down so that he could grasp it better, and let out a slow breath of relief as he squirmed his way back to standing again.

“There we go,” he said, looking up at the Changewing as he put the egg on the ledge. It had stopped growling and cocked its head; he was not sure whether or not that was curiosity. Hiccup dug in with his left foot and pulled himself up, almost launching himself past the ledge and scrambling to get his knee to it, grabbing at the rock above as well. Pain burred across his right knee, followed by the predictable dampness of blood. This narrow a gap could either stop him from falling, or make it worse if he did. Still clinging to the face of the rock, Hiccup scooped up the egg in his right hand again and straightened up with it, grabbing for the edge of the rock with his left and holding the egg to his chest as he emerged face-to-face with the Changewing once again.

It stared at him, unblinking, the stone around them and Hiccup’s exposed head reflected in its yellow eyes. A very long moment passed. Then Hiccup held the egg out and up, and the Changewing reached forward to scoop it onto its nose, teeth actually brushing against Hiccup’s skin as it took hold. The egg came to settle just against its parted lips, secure behind a row of fangs, and then it sprung into the air and was gone in one greet sweep, fading to a dull grey again as it vanished up into the layers of rock above them.

Hiccup turned, still balancing on the narrow ledge, to see Toothless and the other Changewing watching him. He held out a hand to Toothless, licking his dry lips. “It’s all right, bud. I’m still here. Just needed to show them I wanted to help.”

With a glance at the Changewing that looked almost like a warning, Toothless stepped forwards and rubbed his nose against Hiccup’s palm with a deep chuff. The other Changewing watched from the rock as Hiccup braced against the ground, hopped, and hauled himself inelegantly to the surface, Toothless grabbing his cloak and pulling as well. He rolled over and spilled onto his back, breathing raggedly.

The Changewing murred something, ending it with a huff, and Hiccup propped himself up on his elbows and looked over at it less fearfully. It blinked slowly, faded out of sight again, and Hiccup thought that he saw a shifting shadow and heard the sound of claws on stone. Toothless’s head moved; he must have been watching it go. Only after a few breaths – or any number of pounding heartbeats – did Toothless look round at Hiccup, cock his head, and murmur.

“No,” Hiccup agreed, “that wasn’t my wisest idea ever. How about we don’t bring the others here?”

Huffing, Toothless licked Hiccup’s face, making him splutter and fall flat once again. Finally, Hiccup managed to extricate himself and get back to his feet, brushing himself down.

“Still, probably better if we try not to outstay our welcome. Let’s head home.”

From the speed that Toothless managed as they cleared out from the island again, Hiccup rather suspected that was something else they were in agreement on, as well.

 

 

 

 

 

By the time they made it back, it was getting well into the afternoon, and the sky had clouded over once again. The wind was at their backs, and Toothless seemed to be pushing harder, so that when they came in to land he was panting and his wings seemed heavy at his side. Hiccup rolled out of the saddle and almost fell into the mud, before shaking some feeling back into his right foot and reminding it that on the ground, it needed to do its share of the work.

“You fancy something to eat, bud?” said Hiccup, cocking his head towards the front door of the house. “Fish?”

Toothless’s flaps perked up again, and he licked his lips. Chuckling, Hiccup rounded the corner of the house just as the door opened and his father emerged, looking around wildly.

“Hiccup!”

“Aha... afternoon, Dad...”

Stoick grabbed him by the arm and hauled him unceremoniously inside. Hiccup yelped, but Toothless continued walking calmly in after them, butting the door open along the way. “Odin’s ghost! Where have you _been_?”

“We just went flying,” he said, trying to squirm out of his father’s grip. It wasn’t happening. Hiccup saw his father look him over, taking in his scraped hands and bloody knee. “Landed on an island,” he added, as if this was some sort of explanation.

“Uh-huh.”

“Is there any chance that Toothless could get something to eat? I mean, I’d fancy something to eat as well, to be fair, but he really deserves it after that long of a flight.”

Stoick did not budge. From behind him, however, Elsa emerged from the doorway of her room, pointed to herself, then at the pantry, then at Toothless. Hiccup gave her a thumbs-up out of his father’s line of sight.

“What have you been doing?” said Stoick.

“Oh, the usual. Saved a dragon egg, made friends with some Changewings,” said Hiccup, with a shrug. Stoick looked as if he was not sure whether he actually believed him or not, though he did release his grip just by a fraction. Probably better not to push his luck, though; Hiccup pulled his arm free but did not try to flee the scene. “Hey, at least I’m not flying at night and in secret any more.”

Reaching up to rub his brow, Stoick sighed. “Sadly, that may be the best thing that can be said right about now. Sit down and have something to eat, then, and I’ll get...” he trailed off as he saw Elsa exiting the pantry, a basket of fish in her arms. “Looks like you’ve got that covered between you, then.”

Elsa gave him a studiously innocent look which made her look far younger than usual, but he simply shook his head and stepped around her instead. With a careful look, she paused before sliding the basket onto the floor in front of Toothless and looking round to catch Hiccup’s eye.

“What is a Changewing?”

“It’s, er, a different type of dragon,” said Hiccup, running a hand through his hair as took off his cloak. Hopefully it was not too late to save this pair of leggings as well. “They’re in the Book of Dragons, I can show – no, I can’t show you pictures, there aren’t any in the book. I can draw one to add to it now.” He raised his voice in his father’s general direction. “See? Important dragon research!”

His father made a derisive sound as he returned with more bread, jam, and cheese. “You’ve missed a proper breakfast, I’m afraid to say.”

“I know, it serves me right.” At the very least, Hiccup supposed, he could save his father some words. “But look, I’m fine. And the knee was actually me climbing rocks again, not the dragons. Not nothing to do with them, I was fetching an egg, but it was me.”

“Somehow, that part I do not doubt,” said Stoick.

“So, how did you get on with Trader Johann?” he dragged the food over mostly because he was hungry, but also just slightly because Elsa was looking thoughtful at the appearance of food and Hiccup was hoping to get at least the majority of it for himself. “Another new weapon, by any chance?”

The hesitation was enough, and Hiccup started laughing before Stoick even pointed a finger at him. “It’s not for me,” he said sternly. “It’s for Dragonbane, you know what he’s like.”

He did, but that still didn’t stop it from being amusing. Hiccup tried not to laugh and ended up snorting indelicately, resting the back of his hand over his mouth. Even Elsa was smiling, possibly just at Stoick’s frustrated tone of voice, as she sat down opposite Hiccup.

It took Hiccup a moment to realise what was different, and it certainly was not the dirt that she was still picking out from beneath her nails. A blue-green oval brooch sat at the hollow of her collarbones, holding together the neck of the shirt into which she had changed. It was a look that seemed faintly familiar to him, though he could not place it; perhaps it was an Arendellen thing. As his eyes lingered there, Elsa reached up with one hand to touch the brooch, and bowed her head, cheeks colouring.

“It looks good,” said Hiccup. A strange look for a Viking, perhaps, but it suited her somehow. “Been introduced to trading with Johann, then?”

Elsa smiled cautiously. “Yes. Gobber helped.”

“Well, Gobber can be trusted not to steal the truffles which I have no doubt were involved.” Hiccup looked over to his father, whose mere refusal to respond was probably confirmation enough.

“Well,” said Elsa, her smile deepening slightly. “The help was more with Johann than with trading.”

Hiccup tried to stifle another laugh, snorted again, and somewhere on the far side of the room Toothless snorted as well from the middle of his basket of fish. That was finally too much, and Hiccup cracked up altogether, leaning on the table as the laughter rolled over him and still relieved to be back from facing the Changewings at all.


	37. Chapter 37

An axe ricocheted off the rock by Hiccups head, making him almost jump out of his skin. He looked round to see the culprit, and honestly could not figure out which of the twins it was. They were both wearing equally would-be-innocent expressions, and Snotlout was not so bad with an axe that he would miss his targets by that much.

“I’d appreciate less of that,” he shouted. He shifted his seat, back to the rock, and recrossed his ankle over his metal foot. Beside him, Fishlegs had also ducked, and was still looking cautious about straightening up again. It might have been possible to grab the axe before one of the twins got to it, but it would probably just get him kicked in the shins for his trouble.

Before the twins could reply, there was a sharp whistle from above them, followed by a Nadder’s shriek. Hiccup shaded his eyes and looked upwards to see Stormfly coming in, Astrid sliding from her back before both of her feet were even on the ground. She had a long narrow bundle in her hand and something slung over her shoulder, and Hiccup could see her grin almost from the moment that she landed.

“Finally done with Johann, then?” he called, as Astrid jogged over. He handed the Book of Dragons to Fishlegs, where they were working on a description of Changewing eggs.

“My mother is,” said Astrid. She unrolled the bundle with a flourish to reveal a longbow, unstrung but gleaming.

“New bow?” Snotlout perked up, putting down the throwing axe he had been toying with and sauntering over to join them.

“Not quite,” she said, but didn’t sound any less proud because of it. “Johann had a recurved bow among his things. My mother had wanted one for a while, so...”

“Less than a moon to Thawfest,” said Hiccup.

Astrid gave him a look, but it gave way to her grin again quickly enough. Some of the Thawfest events were only open to the adults, and there would be more options for them this year than there had been in the past. Longbows were among them; last year, they had only had shortbows to contend with.

“So, you thinking of entering the melee as well?” Snotlout leant close to examine the bow, until Astrid switched hands to hold it away from him again. “I mean, it can get pretty messy in there, it could always do to plan an alliance...”

“Alliances are only ever temporary in the melee,” said Astrid flatly. “Besides, I’ve got plenty of practice with an axe.” She tossed the skin she had been using to protect the bow to Hiccup, who rolled it up and stuffed it beside him, and pulled out a bowstring and stringer. “I am looking forward, however, to getting to handle this bow.”

Hiccup glanced over to the axe that had come uncomfortably close to him not moments before. “How do you feel about moving targets?” he said.

She snorted. “Don’t tempt me. You want to try, after I’ve got a feel for it?”

“I won’t have the stance,” said Hiccup. He wasn’t actually sure whether it was true or not; his foot might not be such a hindrance in something like archery. “But thank you for the offer.”

“Elsa?” Astrid did not even miss a beat as she strung the bow and held it up, expression all but glowing at the sight of the bow in her hand. “You?”

To Hiccup’s surprise, Elsa did not immediately refuse; she hesitated, expression hard to read, then smiled ruefully and shook her head. “Thank you, but no. I have used a shorter bow, but it was a long time ago.”

“Wildlands?” asked Hiccup softly, catching her eye. She nodded. It did not fully surprise him; Arendelle produced some decent archers, and eight was not overly young, but Arendelle’s army was made wholly of men and he had never seen an Arendellen woman armed. True, the princess had beaten him up with a fencing sword in the past, but they had just been children playing together and the princess could get away with a lot more anyway.

Astrid shrugged. “Suit yourselves. Hey, Snotlout,” she added, giving him a wicked smile. “You need both of those targets because you’re hoping to actually hit something?”

“What? Don’t want to share?” he waggled his eyebrows in a way which was probably meant to be flirtatious, but was almost certainly ill-thought-out while Astrid was still holding her new bow.

“Well, if you want to stand between me and my target, feel free,” she said.

Even if it had took a moment to get through, it seemed that Snotlout did indeed think better of that, and he stomped off to separate the two targets by enough that he and the twins could use one for their axes, and Astrid could use the other for her arrows. Hiccup shook his head.

“Sorry about this turning into Thawfest Practice,” he said to Elsa. “I swear that wasn’t what I intended when I bought everyone up here.”

There was clanging in the background as the twins gave up on the targets and started on each other, instead. If he was honest, Hiccup could not help feeling a bit safer because of it. He sighed and turned back to Fishlegs. “Where were we?”

“You were describing the nests.”

“I didn’t get that close a look,” said Hiccup. “But... I guess a look is better than nothing, right?” He was absolutely not going to suggest going and visiting the island again, at least anywhere that the twins might hear. If they were careful, he might trust Fishlegs or Astrid not to get into trouble, and maybe the Changewings would even be friendlier on meeting him a second time, but the twins and probably Snotlout would be a horror story waiting to happen. “Pity we can’t ask Toothless, really, he knew they were there before I did.”

“How, do you think? The sound? The smell?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. But at least I know now to listen to him in future.” From the far side of Elsa, Toothless rumbled agreement. “Yes, yes, I know.”

They set to work on the latest pages, discussing turns of phrase, Hiccup sketching out the Changewings in charcoal to be replaced with ink later and on a more stable surface. Picking apart every moment of what he had seen on the island took rather longer.

It took hardly any time for Astrid to consistently hit the target with her new bow, but longer for her to start looking satisfied with the spread that she made. Snotlout talked the twins into a miniature melee, largely by throwing shields at them, but before long was watching in complete frustration as they concentrated on each other.

After a few rounds of arrows, Astrid marched over to Elsa, grabbed her by the hand, and pulled her to her feet. Elsa protested, and Hiccup went to speak up, but once Astrid shifted her hand to Elsa’s arm her protests ceased. Astrid steered Elsa over to the patch of ground where she had stood the quiver and marked a line on the ground.

Hiccup smiled as he watched them, Astrid putting the bow into Elsa’s hands and talking her into an archery stance, talking and gesturing as she did so. Elsa nocked the arrow, tested the weight, and then raised the bow and drew. It was not a bad draw, if she had not tried in years, he thought idly, though it was not as full as it could have been. Her first arrow hit the ground roughly in the right direction for the target, which still put it ahead of the axe from earlier in the day, and Astrid laughed, clapping Elsa on the shoulder and handing her another arrow.

He could not blame the others for being excited about Thawfest. There were new competitions, and some of them stood a real chance; Hiccup himself had been encouraging Fishlegs to try some of the tests of strength that were open only to the adults. If Hiccup had found his strength, though, it had been in dragons, and they were not something that made an appearance. Quite how training a dragon could be turned into a sport, he was not sure he wanted to know. It could well involve getting burned again.

“Hey, Hiccup,” said Ruffnut, with glee in her voice. Hiccup looked up warily to see that she had one foot on the back of Tuffnut’s head while he flailed and made muffled sounds into the dirt. “When are we getting a pet Changewing?”

He waited for the punchline, but nothing followed. “We’re not getting a pet Changewing,” said Hiccup.

“Why are you writing about it, then?” Ruffnut ignored the hands trying to grab at her ankle, and simply pressed a little harder on the back of Tuffnut’s head.

“Because it’s new information?” said Hiccup. “We’ve put information about the Red Death in here, and we’re certainly not getting one of those as a pet.”

“Pity,” said Tuffnut, somewhat muffled by the ground.

Snotlout snorted, leaning on his axe. “I’ll let you two muck out its pen.”

“No pet Changewings, no pet Red Deaths, no new surprise dragons,” Hiccup said firmly. He glanced over at Fishlegs and shrugged, honestly not sure what else he could do when it came to the twins some days. “We have plenty of dragons from plenty of species as it is.”

 

 

 

 

 

Although nobody in the house used them, they did have both a shortbow and a longbow stored safely away, strings and arrows, and even a quiver tucked safely inside one of the chests. Hiccup added each item to the table as he found it, and had just retrieved a stringer from the depths of his room when he heard the front door open and close downstairs.

“Elsa?” he hauled himself to his feet and trotted over to the top of the stairs. Gobber was at the forge, Stoick chiefing, and Elsa had said that she wanted to spend some time with the other Nightmare and her hatchlings. “Guess what I found!”

“I may not be Elsa, but I’d still like to know.”

Hiccup looked over the balustrade to see his father entering the house. “Sorry, Dad.”

Stoick shrugged off his heavy fur cloak, chuckling. “Well, I have to say it’s the first time I’ve been mistaken for, well, Elsa.” He brushed off his hands, then put them on his hips. “Well, what is it that you’ve found then?”

“I was just digging out our archery stuff,” Hiccup said, with a wave of the stringer. “Astrid got Elsa using a bow today. I think she was enjoying it.”

“Well, it would be nice to see someone using it, I suppose. Come on down, we need to have a chat.”

“Again?” Hiccup exchanged a look of trepidation with Toothless, or at least tried to in hope of getting some sympathy. Toothless, however, was perched on one of the rafters, tail dangling and a curious expression on his face. “I didn’t think I’d even done anything wrong since we last spoke.”

Waving for Hiccup to join him downstairs, Stoick took a seat beside the fire and settled back comfortably. All right, that wasn’t his usual stiffer chiefing bearing, either. Hiccup made his way downstairs, set the stringer on the table, and pulled up a chair, all without taking his eyes off his father.

“You haven’t, Hiccup,” said Stoick finally, once they were both sitting down. “No, I wanted to talk to you about Thawfest this year.”

As soon as the first snowdrops were spotted, Berk started talking about Thawfest, and Trader Johann’s arrival simply redirected the excitement and gossip for a couple of days before preparations really picked up. Hiccup knew that his friends were not the only ones practicing, and that in between readying the fields and watching for the start of lambing and calving season there would be plenty of adults touching up their skills as well. Last year, even Hiccup had tried, focusing on his balance for the log roll and his grip for rock climbing, in the hope that he might not embarrass himself quite so badly in those events. It had paid off – he had certainly not won, but he had not come last either. For anyone other than the chief’s son, it would not have been so bad.

“Look, Dad, I’m sorry, but there really isn’t a chance of me taking part.” Hiccup slumped down in his chair, gesturing downwards with his left hand. “Unless we’re planning to introduce a furlong on crutches race which, let’s be honest, would be an event more suited to Stump Day.”

Before he had even finished, though, Stoick was hushing him, waving his hands gently. “No, no, I know that and I understand. I’ve known plenty of folk have to sit out on a year because they’ve broken an ankle. But as it is, I think that this could be to your advantage.”

“Wait, what?” Hiccup knew that he was bad when it came to Thawfest, but last year had been a significant decrease in terms of embarrassment. Despite everything, Hiccup had always had to infer his father’s disappointment; Stoick had never stated it outright, not when it came to this. It was only when Hiccup had actively messed up that he had been firm about it.

“Because,” said Stoick, “I always need someone to help me oversee things. Previously, it’s been Spitelout, but I know that he’s wanting to compete with Burplout in some of the events. And now that you’re an adult, and with all things considered,” he waved in Hiccup’s direction, encompassing all of him, “I think it would be good for you to oversee some of the events.”

There were words, and they made sentences, but Hiccup was really not sure that they made all that much sense. He stared at his father gormlessly while Stoick looked on. “Huh?” he finally managed.

“Spitelout has helped me oversee the events in the past, as he is a cousin, but you’re a man and my son, and it makes good sense for you to be involved. You know what it involves, you’ve seen it happen often enough.”

“Well, I,” Hiccup spluttered, “I know the theory. Shout loudly enough to be heard and make sure nobody cheats. But... _me_?”

He was not prepared for his father to reach over and take hold of one of his hands. “Hiccup, listen to me. I know we’ve had our disagreements in the past, but I hope that you realise that I am being serious here.”

“No thought to the contrary ever crossed my mind,” he lied immediately.

From the way that Stoick raised an eyebrow, he might have heard more than Hiccup said. “Well, I’ll let you think on that, if you’d rather. We have a half moon or so. The other thing I meant to ask is whether that academy of yours would be free for use for some of the events?”

“The academy?” said Hiccup, then followed it with; “Of _ours_?”

“Well, there’s no-one else been using it,” said Stoick, a little more gruffly. He shifted his weight in his seat, with a mutter to himself, and Hiccup tried not to look too much like he was frozen in place. “And this time last year the dragons were still there. But we know that everyone can gather round if they wish, and it will be easy enough to set up the stands again. Who knows, maybe they could become a permanent feature.”

Having entered this conversation expecting to be told off for yet another mistake, Hiccup was not sure where to put his thoughts. He groaned, reaching up to rub his face with his hands, then peered over his fingertips at his father. “You’re serious about all of this?”

“Is it the sort of thing I’d joke about?”

The thought of his father cracking jokes about the academy and Thawfest was funny, and part of the reason Hiccup hid behind his hands again might have been because he was biting his tongue not to start laughing. But it would have been incredulous laughter, the whole situation so surreal that he was not sure what to say. “Dad,” he said, dropping one hand away again and running the other through his hair. “I’m... really flattered, I think. But I’m really not sure that this is the sort of thing you want me to be doing. I mean, who’s going to listen to me? About Thawfest, of all things?”

When it came to dragons, he could at least claim that he knew more about training and working with them than just about anyone else on Berk. When it came to Thawfest, all that he knew was how to lose impressively for the past seven years.

Stoick’s expression became gentle. “Don’t worry, Hiccup. They will.”

Unsure how to reply, Hiccup propped his chin on his hand, and Stoick cleared his throat and got to his feet. He patted the back of Hiccup’s chair and disappeared into the back room, saying something about looking for a particular knife and letting the door swing closed behind him.

Hiccup let out a slow breath, and looked up at Toothless still sitting overhead. The dragon looked back. It was not particularly helpful, but it did make Hiccup feel better to know that he had someone with whom he could discuss this once he was out of earshot of his father. A dragon was probably a step up from thin air, at the very least.

He was still trying to think, mind still blank, when the door opened again and Elsa entered. She was smiling, movements smooth and calm, and looked to be having as good of a day as she had been even before going to visit the young Nightmares. It did not surprise Hiccup that she seemed happier after being around them; dragons didn’t care about anything other than whether you were nice to them and, ideally, fed them. But it was still nice to know that there were days that she did better even without tinytooth dragons to help her along.

“Oh, Hiccup.” Elsa waved a greeting between brushing stray raindrops off her shoulders. “You are all right? The weather is turning.”

“It never ceases to amaze me how rapidly Berk has developed your weather-related vocabulary,” he said by way of response. Words like etiquette had probably not come up at any point in the last year nine moons or so, but Elsa could describe various types of rain like a native. “Oh, I dug up those from various corners of the house,” he added, as Elsa peered over at the items spread out on the table. “It turns out we do have projectile weapons in the house other than Gobber’s ability to spit.”

“You changed your mind? You are shooting in Thawfest?”

She crossed to the table and picked up one of the arrows, looking it over carefully. The arrowheads had been Hiccup’s work, a few years ago now when he had been learning how to do finer metalwork and get good edges. They were still sharp; he had checked.

“No,” said Hiccup. “I was wondering if you might want to use them.”

Astonishment filled Elsa’s features. She looked from the arrows to Hiccup and back again as if expecting them to vanish, then shook her head, almost laughing. “It is not Snoggletog again.”

“No, but they were honestly gathering dust and you seemed to take pretty well to that bow today. There are shortbow contests as well. Two distances.”

“I used a bow when I was much younger,” she said, wrapping an arm across her chest. “I was... eight? Nine? In the Wildlands, the first people I stayed with. They tried to teach me, so that I could help to hunt, or to fight. But I did not have a bow when I left.” Rubbing her arm, she seemed to fold in on herself, shrinking against the table. “It made it hard. Not just to hunt. When I met people, I would try to pretend I was a hunter. But if they saw I did not have a bow, they would not believe me.”

Hiccup got to his feet and walked over to stand next to her, gently peeling her hand away from her arm. “You don’t have to,” he said again. “Thawfest is nothing more than a bit of fun and competition. Gives people a reason to wrestle each other, which always helps.” He steered her hand over to the table and rested it on top of the quiver. “Just... if you want to.”

He squeezed her hand, and she smiled.

At the sound of movement in the back room, Hiccup stepped back and cleared his throat. “But yes. I need to go talk to Astrid about something. I’ll be back later.”

Elsa nodded, then looked back at the bows and arrows again, frowning faintly. Backing up, Hiccup looked up at Toothless and whistled, bringing Toothless jumping down to the table and then the floor with a huff. He rubbed his head against Hiccup’s hand.

“I guess he’s coming, as well.”

 

 

 

 

 

Talking to Astrid had been a complete lie. Before the rain had even become too heavy, Hiccup and Toothless were sitting in one of the caves that pockmarked the limestone cliffs, watching the sea turn grey and white and the sky turn to sheets of water.

“It’s not that I don’t get that I’m the chief’s son,” he said, leaning back so that he was lying against Toothless’s side. He could feel himself lifted with every breath. “But it’s like... _suddenly_ I’m the chief’s son. Because I haven’t particularly been for the previous fourteen years.”

Toothless sighed, and Hiccup rose and fell with it. The sound of the rain was a reassuring, world-dulling rush outside.

“I screwed up,” he said. “Gods know, I screwed up more times than I can count. I know why people got mad, you know – I mean, I was trying to help, but I got houses burnt down, I got sheep taken, I... I didn’t get people killed, I guess.” He gave a half-hearted shrug. “But if that’s the best you can say then...

“I was better in the forge. Not that Gobber would admit it, but I did know what I was doing in there. It gave me something to learn. I sort of thought that I was apprenticed to Gobber because my father was going to name someone else his heir,” said Hiccup, looking over at Toothless. “Did I ever tell you that?”

Head on his front paws, Toothless watched, unblinking and calm. His warmth and breathing let Hiccup feel that he was _there_ , though, that for once Hiccup was not just talking to himself.

“Spitelout didn’t say anything, he has more class than that, but Snotlout...” he sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “Yeah, Snotlout would say things, if he was trying to get me mad.”

In hindsight, he knew that Snotlout had only done it when he was angry, when Hiccup had outwitted him with words and he had nothing left that would work in an argument. Hiccup had become good at keeping their fighting verbal at a relatively young age, and that had frustrated Snotlout to no end as well.

The worst part, though, had always been the nagging feeling that Snotlout was _right_. Because Hiccup didn’t make a bad smith, despite struggling with the size and weight of some of the tools that Gobber swung around like they were twigs in his hand. But the thought of him being a chief had been laughable, proof for some that it would be better to go back to the Viking ways of becoming chief through combat, rather than the southern inheritance that Berk had adopted when it made peace with Arendelle all those years ago.

“It tended to work,” Hiccup admitted. “I’m not sure where he got it, though. There’s no way that Snotlout understood lines of inheritance that well when we were seven.”

Toothless shifted his wing, brushing against Hiccup’s shoulder, and Hiccup tilted his head so that his temple rested against the wing joint. It was asking for a wing in the face if Toothless was feeling mischievous, but on this occasion it was permitted.

“I mean, I’ve got plenty of time, right? Dad was twenty-six, and he was young.”

Unexpectedly so. Hiccup did not know all of the details of his grandfather’s death, but he knew that it had been expected, that it had been violent, and that his father did not like to talk about what had happened. Or even have Gobber talk about it, and once Hiccup had been old enough to recognise the pain he had stopped asking. That had been years ago.

“But everything that my Dad does, he...” Hiccup waved a hand to the ceiling, and across an imaginary Berk. “He held this place together through the worst of the dragon attacks! Through Alvin’s betrayal and Weselton trying to invade! Stoick the Vast _is_ Berk, everybody knows that. And every time he welcomes a child into a tribe, or listens to everyone’s problems on Gripe Day, or oversees Thawfest, _that’s_ who they’re seeing, _that’s_ who they’re listening to.

“And...” he let his hands flop back down onto his chest again. “Then there’s a boy with one leg who makes friends with wildlings and dragons. Honestly, after that, the fact that my father always used to win Thawfest, and I have a fine tradition of losing, is really just a drop in the ocean.”

His voice had risen, and he cut himself off as the threat of an echo wrapped back towards him. He needed to say the words, to get them out of his head where he could sort through them better, but he didn’t need to hear them coming back again from the walls. That was another of the advantages of a dragon.

Stoick had _asked_ about the academy, though, not just announced that they were going to use it, and called it the academy rather than the arena as even Hiccup occasionally found himself thinking of it. It was more of that disconcerting feeling that he was actually trusted around Berk, which led uncomfortable into the idea that was being _entrusted_ with more than not injuring himself too badly.

All right, so maybe helping Elsa had been the start of that. But she seemed more capable of looking after herself than Hiccup was, more than often enough.

“Do you trust me, bud?” said Hiccup, looking over at Toothless again. Toothless lifted his head slightly and snorted, then stretched his head back. Smiling, Hiccup obliged and reached forward to stroke his cheek in return. “I guess we’ve got to trust each other, in the sky, huh? You were the first one who did, though. You and Elsa.”

The screw ups that they had seen were nothing like what the rest of the village had witnessed, though. Falling off a dragon was... actually, that was a pretty stupid thing to be doing, now that he put it in those words. It had just seemed like a logical step at the time.

And now, less than a year later, here was the offer from his father. Help to oversee the Thawfest Games. Announce the winners to the crowds, chastise the person who inevitably tried to cheat – even if it was more commonly in the spirit of Loki and playing tricks, and not out of real malice.

Be the son of the chief.

Sitting in a cave with a dragon while the rain grew heavier outside was probably not the most chiefly way that things could be done, but it was still better than panicking and blurting out whatever came to mind first. Hiccup drew his vest tighter around him, thinking of the Night Fury worked into the back, the pride that Stoick had not been able to hide when they were standing around the table on Snoggletog morning.

“How bad can it be, huh?” he said, trying to keep his voice light but glad that it was only Toothless who was there to hear how badly he was doing. “Shout at a few people, get to be Stoick the Vast for a couple of days. I might need a stool to stand on for that part, I guess. Do you think I should do it?”

Toothless rumbled.

Chuckling, Hiccup corrected himself. “All right. Do you think we should do it? Who knows, maybe having a dragon will make the rules easier to enforce.”

Toothless stretched out a wing, pushing Hiccup’s head aside but then angling the wing so that it spread over Hiccup’s body like a blanket. There was nothing stopping them from flying back in the rain, but it was comfortable and leaning against Toothless was keeping him warm enough, and Hiccup decided that it could wait for now. His father had said that he would give him time to think, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

The rain went on for longer than he had expected. Long enough for the rock on which he sat to become uncomfortable, at the very least, and for Hiccup to move from talking to Toothless about Thawfest onto wondering aloud with Toothless what dragons could do for the village. Dragon fire in the forge, whether Meatlug could purify iron ore for them without the need for them to build a smelter that the village could ill manage, let alone afford the materials for, dragons that could protect the sheep and goats from the occasional forays by wolves or boar from the Wildlands. He was just starting to think out loud about what he wanted to do about contacting the Wildlings when he realised that the sky was darkening, and unless he wanted to sleep in the cave it would probably be an idea to head back.

“Fast and direct?” he suggested to Toothless, as he did up the saddle and slid back in again. Toothless grunted. “Yeah, I’ll hold on tight.”

The rain lashed against his face, so cold that he would almost believe they were still in winter, as they cut out from the cave and whirled in the air, a vertical rather than a horizontal turn that spun Hiccup’s head and made him feel alive. They skidded to a halt within feet of the door and tumbled inside one over each other, Hiccup staggering out of the way so that Toothless could barge in and shake himself, spraying water in every direction.

By the time that he had finished shielding his eyes and shutting the door, Hiccup looked up to see his father, looking slightly amused, and Gobber, looking hugely amused.

“So, where’ve you been hiding up?” said Gobber. “You haven’t been out in the whole of that rain, or you would’ve dissolved by now.”

“Cave,” he said. “Thought we might sit out the worst of the rain... must have forgotten that I was living on Berk for a while there.” He pushed his hair back, then shook water off his hand. “Toothless makes it less muddy to get back, though.”

“Something which I appreciate, I assure you,” said Gobber.

“Everything’s all right?” Stoick asked. He was standing by the table from which, Hiccup saw, the archery equipment had gone.

“I’m good,” Hiccup said. “Just damp. I hope that Trader Johann moved inside again, otherwise he’s going to be selling bowls of water before this rain’s over.”

“All of his things are in one of the barns,” Stoick said, visibly relaxing. He walked over to the fire and lifted the lid of the cooking pot there to glanced in, then murmured appreciatively.

Gobber watched, and hid the spoon in his hand behind his back. “Still trading, though. Got a queue of people outside in the rain while he stays nice and dry. Probably still come up to the Great Hall for a warm meal if he’s got any sense, though.”

“I think ‘sense’ might be a little debateable,” said Hiccup. He hung up his cloak and inspected his sleeves, pleased to find himself mostly still dry. A few minutes in front of the fire would sort out his leggings, and would certainly be less work than getting changed again after the blood incident earlier. “But he seems to have survived this long, so he must be doing something right.”

“And that something is not divebombing dragons down the cliffs to frighten unwitting traders,” said Stoick, so abruptly that Hiccup was fairly sure it had just occurred to him.

“Aha, yeah...” Hiccup laughed nervously. “Uh, momentary inspiration from Loki?”

“Aye,” said Stoick. It was more weary than annoyed, however, which was probably going to be a good sign. “Well, at least he knew about our dragons before you put on that little show.”

“I’m not that bad!”

Stoick said nothing, expression not even wavering as he looked at Hiccup.

“I’d quit while you’re ahead,” said Gobber. “Having a Night Fury in the house doesn’t exactly support your sense, either.”

That one, Hiccup might have to give them.


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is the _exact_ chapter that I gave up on anything resembling historical accuracy, and mentally decided that HTTYD is set in a post-apocalyptic world. Not particularly plot-relevant, but basically, I needed chocolate in a Viking setting. So there's chocolate. That's a thing.
> 
> Knattleikr is a Viking ball game; we're not quite sure of its rules, but there have been some attempts to recreate it. I intend to do a short/outtake with my version of the rules soon.
> 
> Some rifles get hung on walls here that won't fire until later fic, mostly the one to come after this. The end of this one is close now! Thank you so much to everyone who is with me for it!

By the second day, Hiccup had persuaded Trader Johann to – rather gingerly – stroke Meatlug’s nose, in return for a few stories about how Johann himself had encountered, or more accurately avoided, dragons during his time at sea. Usually Hiccup tuned out Johann’s stories, but this time he not only paid attention but rather neglected his supper in favour of it, mentally teasing apart what was likely to be real and what was not. Stoick’s expression turned rather glazed, and over the course of the evening even Elsa went from looking interested in Johann’s story and the new words therein to dipping her bread into Hiccup’s stew and even leaving the table in search of seconds.

“And then, of course,” said Johann, as the conversation slipped out of Hiccup’s control again, “there was the death of the eighth Prince of the Southern Isles, huge mourning, of course. I swear, every trade ship that docked was full of black fabric that week! Such a tragic illness, of course, so sudden, he always had been healthy. There were rumours on the docks, about this prince or that king’s daughter, but who knows with these southern Kingdoms, eh?”

He looked round as if he was going to get some agreement, but other than Arendelle there were no real dealings between Berk and more southerly lands. Even Weselton, next-closest to them in distance, had too much bad history with Berk to be regarded with anything other than suspicion.

“The Winterfleshers, Johann. Where did you see them?” said Hiccup pointedly. Steering Johann through a conversation was like steering the twins through a forest, with only marginally less crashing or chance of explosion.

It mostly worked, though.

On the third day, Johann even stood face-to-face with Toothless while Hiccup manipulated his hand up and into the appropriate position. He was scared so stiff that Hiccup had to physically turn his head away from Toothless, but it was still progress, and there was no screaming when Toothless finally conceded to pressing his nose to Johann’s hand.

“There you go, see!” said Hiccup, releasing Johann. “Not that bad, is it?”

“That much, I will acknowledge,” replied Johann, pulling his hand back to his chest again and stepping back. “But I think that I will leave the riding of them to you and your colleagues, Master Hiccup.”

“Well, if you ever get tired of the boat...”

Johann gave a nervous, incredulous laugh. “And that, I am quite sure, will be the day that they bury me.”

“Don’t worry, Johann,” said Stoick, who had been watching carefully as the little scene played itself out. “We’re not expecting you to be adopting a dragon yourself. Just don’t be surprised if by your summer visit, there are even more of them to be seen.”

“If there are surprises to come, I doubt that those will be among them.”

Everything that had changed had been since Johann’s last visit. It was a dizzying feeling, even if it had been through the winter and that period of time was twice what it would be before he next came to their shores. With one final look from Stoick to Hiccup to Toothless, Johann gave them a wave that had something of a salute about it, in the way salutes were used far south of Berk, and retreated up the gangplank and onto his ship.

He had to leave while the tides and winds were in his favour, of course, and the winds were too perfect to delay even another day. There had been some hurried last-minute trading that morning, and the very last thing to change hands was the purse of Arendellen currency that Johann gave to Stoick, his traditional payment for docking in Berk for the year or so running up to one of the Arendellen treaty years. There would be more come summer, and then Stoick and anyone who went with him would be well-set to visit Arendelle.

There were plenty of people looking to wave him off, a few of them clutching their new weapons or bags of spices to their chests. There were occasional visits from other islands or travellers, but Johann was Berk’s only truly regular visitor, and most of Berk was at least a little bit enamoured with him for bringing his trade all the way to them. Hiccup suspected that having the trading market all to himself was a good incentive, but sometimes wondered whether there was something else that drew him here.

“Well,” said Stoick, as Johann’s ship moved out of anyone’s shouting range, beyond the shallow protective bay that gave Berk at least something of a harbour. “That’s one thing done, I suppose.”

“Another person won over,” Hiccup said, grinning. Stoick rolled his eyes, but Hiccup knew full well that he was not really annoyed. There was no shouting or becoming red-faced, for a start. “Hey, no fireballs, no screaming, trade went on as usual. That’s got to be a success.”

Finally, his father heaved a sigh, and smiled. “Yes. I suppose it is. Come on, then. We’ve only got another ten days or so to prepare for Thawfest!”

Hiccup groaned. He saw a lot of carpentry in his future, if the conversation with his father the previous evening was anything to go by. It had seemed like an excellent idea, at first, to suggest that they work on the stands for the academy to make them fit to be sat on for an entire day straight and easier to put together and take apart as needed, but that had been before Stoick had commented that Hiccup’s knowledge of smithing put him in excellent stead to work with Gobber and Spitelout to get that sorted. Stoick and Phlegma would be seeing to measuring out the routes for the land and sea races, finding out roughly how many people were going to be involved in each of the events, and establishing just which of them would be held in the academy and which would not.

Then again, he thought as somebody from further up the steps started shouting that Stoick needed to come quickly to sort something out, it could always be worse.

 

 

 

 

 

“All right, gang, I know that not everyone is here, but I’ll speak to Astrid later,” said Hiccup, clasping his hands together. “With Thawfest coming up, my father has said that he wants to use the academy to hold some of the events, and I know that some of us are going to be busy with the farms. So,” he pressed on, despite the fact that the twins were already starting to look elsewhere and he really wasn’t sure about Snotlout, “I’m just going to suggest that you try to fit in a daily flight if you can, even if it’s a short one, and agree that we’ll meet up again once Thawfest is done and cleared away. Does that sound good for everyone?”

Deafening silence greeted him. Elsa nodded, Fishlegs looked around uncertainly, and Snotlout seemed highly interested in cleaning out his ear.

“Well, thank you for your input,” he said.

From behind him, Stormfly shrieked a greeting, and Hiccup turned to wave Astrid in. She had her axe with her, but no bow this time around, and was grinning as she bought Stormfly to a skidding halt almost on top of Hiccup. One wing almost clipped him around the ear, but he played along and refused to move even as Astrid slid down right in front of him.

“We were checking traplines,” she said by way of explanation. The plural probably included Runa, he figured.

“Well, you haven’t really missed anything. I was just saying that we were probably going to be having a break with the academy until after Thawfest. While we’ve all got other things to be worrying about.”

Astrid less than some of them, perhaps, but they were all adults now, and the academy had been taking time away from all of them. She looked a little disappointed, but nodded.

“I get it. Well, if this is going to be our last meeting for a while, I might as well get these out now.” She pulled open one of the saddlebags which she had added to Stormfly’s saddle and produced a small leather pouch, which she opened up and offered to Hiccup. “Here. Try one.”

Cautiously, Hiccup reached into the bag, fingers brushing against a cool, smooth surface. He drew out a small brown block about an inch across, glanced at Astrid, then lifted it up to sniff it. It was familiar, but he could not place the smell, rich and slightly bitter.

“What’s that? I want it. Let me smell it.” Tuffnut almost tried to climb over Hiccup in his attempt to get to Astrid, and Hiccup put a firm hand on his head to steer him away again.

“It’s chocolate,” said Astrid. “Johann meant to sell it in Arendelle, but forgot. Not that he said that, of course,” she added with a roll of her eyes, “but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. They won’t last much longer on the ship, so I was able to get a good deal for them.”

“Hides?”

She nodded.

“You don’t have to share these with the rest of us, you know,” said Hiccup, with another sweep of his arm to push Tuffnut away again. Stormfly turned her head to groom her shoulder, coincidentally getting in Tuffnut’s way as she did so.

“It’s Stormfly who’s let us run the traplines as easily,” said Astrid. She lifted her chin defiantly, her voice tightening. “And that’s the academy. So these are for the academy.”

The way that she said it broached absolutely no arguments, and with a smile Hiccup finally assented to taking a bite out of the chocolate. The taste was even better than the smell, nutty and warm on the centre of his tongue, smooth-textured. He covered his mouth with one hand rather than swallow it quickly and waste the taste of it. “Thank you,” he said.

Astrid’s smile softened a little, just for him, and then she stepped around him and offered the bag to Fishlegs in turn. Tuffnut groaned in disappointment. Within no time at all, though, Astrid had been round everyone, only tugging the bag back to her chest when Toothless attempted to stick his nose into it, and came last to Elsa, who had stepped round to greet Stormfly instead.

“Here,” said Astrid.

Elsa looked astonished, and raised her hands. “Oh, no. I could not. I do not have a dragon.”

“It doesn’t mean that you aren’t part of the academy,” replied Astrid, getting there just before Hiccup managed to say the same thing. “Who was it who found that infected scratch on Stormfly’s tail?”

It had been hard to find, mostly-hidden beneath one of Stormfly’s spines and with the paling of her scales difficult to see against the cream. Stormfly’s grumbling and shifting had not helped in the slightest, and only Elsa’s cold hands had been able to still her twitching tail long enough to search along it.

“Besides,” Astrid continued airily, “there’ll only be one left after I have one, and these muttonheads will fight after the last one if I let them have it. And despite Toothless looking hopeful, I don’t really want to find out what chocolate does to dragons.”

Elsa smiled, and took one of the chocolates from the bag.

Stepping back, Astrid grinned and pulled out the last one, flicking it into the air and catching it again as she stuffed the leather pouch into her belt. Hiccup was already licking the last of the chocolate off his fingers where it had melted, still trying to remember where he had smelled or tasted it before. Arendelle, perhaps; he was fairly sure that it was not something that had come to Berk before now.

“Oh, man,” moaned Snotlout. “This is amazing.”

Hiccup looked round with some concern, given Snotlout’s tone of voice, but his eyes were simply closed and he had chocolate smeared on his lips. Hookfang leant down to sniff the half a chocolate remaining in Snotlout’s hand, but Snotlout seemed to realise without even looking and pulled his hand down out of Hookfang’s reach. The dragon got a mouthful of air, and huffed, putting on an expression that might, on a human, have been called doleful.

“Well, there’s my nightmare for the next moon or so,” said Astrid flatly.

The air around them dropped sharply in temperature, and Hiccup felt the hairs on the back of his arms standing on end. He looked around, just in time to see Elsa staring at the chocolate in her hand, shaking and with tears in her eyes. She took half a step back, the chocolate slipping from her fingers, chest heaving.

“Elsa?” said Hiccup gently. He didn’t want to draw the attention of the others, but it was hard when they were in so small a circle and the air was getting increasingly cold.

“I can’t.” He had to read her lips, unable to hear what she was saying.

He took a step towards her, but in an instant the air grew colder still, so cold that Hiccup could see his breath on the air, and then Elsa bolted from the arena.

“Shit!” said Hiccup. He grabbed his cane, which he was still using since the night with the Whispering Deaths had injured his stump again, and hurried as fast as he could after her, but she was out of the door before he had even managed to get all the way around Stormfly.

“What’s wrong?” said Astrid.

“Can I have that chocolate?” Tuffnut pointed to the dusty half-chocolate left on the ground.

With a growl of frustration in Tuffnut’s vague direction, Hiccup spun to find Toothless already waiting for him, back arched to proffer his saddle. There was only one path back to the village, but if Elsa skirted around the back of the academy she could reach open land, at least as far as the sharp bluff that separated this part of Berk from the Wildlands. There was even a stretch of forest there, which small though it was would be impossible to search from dragonback.

“Academy over,” said Hiccup. “I’ll see you later.”

He swung into the saddle, feet barely off the ground before Toothless bounded towards the entrance. They cleared the roof just as Hiccup got his foot into the stirrup, and Toothless hit the air without even pausing to be sure.

A snap of the tail and Hiccup pulled them up, arcing out over the sea so that he had a better view of the path back to the village. There was no sign of Elsa, not even a flicker of movement, and with a frustrated hiss, Hiccup turned them towards the clear land beyond the academy, where not even training tended to go.

It was not deadland, not quite, and it had enough of a cliff to make it a barrier to wildlings, but there was no farming out here and the woods were too cut off to have much more than birds inhabiting it. They were no good for hunting. Truth be told, Hiccup was only aware of it because he had taken it upon himself to go exploring in the area and found it to be a surprisingly good spot for peace and quiet on the days when the arena had not been in use.

A gust of cold wind buffeted them in the air, and while it could have just been Berkian weather he had his doubts. Whatever had happened, Elsa had been scared, and he had to find her before she wrapped up in herself again.

He scanned the ground below for movement, but could not see anything more than the wind shifting trees and bushes. Pulling down low enough that he could glimpse the ground between the trees, Hiccup slowed them down again, craning his neck.

“Come on, bud,” he said. “Help me find her.”

They swept across the forest, over the drop that led to the Wildlands, and Hiccup turned them in the air to sweep back once again. As he did so, he caught sight of a pale figure on the edge of the bluff, stark against the trees behind.

It wasn’t going to be the easiest of landings, but if Elsa was trying to run he was not sure that he had the time to land elsewhere. Hiccup picked what looked like the largest open space along the edge of the rock and plunged into it, braking hard at the last moment. Beating hard with his wings, Toothless bought them in for a neat landing, and Hiccup all but tumbled out of the saddle towards Elsa, wide-eyed and shaking.

He blinked at first, not quite sure what he was seeing. The long-sleeved shirt and knee-length tunic that she was wearing today were dark colours, as Elsa tended towards, but now they glittered with ice. It dripped from the cuffs of her sleeves, trailed up her arms, and spread from her chest like the bleed of ink through water. Ice coated her boots in spikes and formed similar veins along her leggings.

“Hiccup,” she said, hands clenched together and held to her chest. “You have to go.”

She had not run, though, he told himself. He had to hope that it was because she wanted to talk to him, and not that she was staying still just long enough to tell him to run.

“Elsa, it’s fine, I know that you’re not going to hurt anyone,” he said. Another whimper broke from her as he edged closer, and when she closed her eyes winter-cold wind swirled at him again. “Just tell me what happened.”

“I can’t–” she choked on the words, opened her eyes again, and stumbled back as she realised how close he was. “Hiccup.” For a moment she raised her hands to ward him away, then snatched them back to herself again. “It... I can’t.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks, freezing as they reached her jaw. Hiccup held out one hand, palm up. “All right,” he said. “That’s all right too. You don’t need to tell me yet. Just breathe. It’s all right.”

If it had been the chocolate that started it, he supposed that at least it was not likely to happen again. Elsa put her hands over her mouth, breathing heavily, but her eyes filled with alarm when Hiccup went to step towards her again.

Rocking back, he held up his hands, and wished desperately that he knew if there was even something he could do, let alone what that something was. There was a huff behind him, and Toothless padded up, rubbing his cheek against Hiccup’s shoulder then looking up at him with huge green eyes.

Hiccup glanced from Toothless to Elsa. “Go on, bud,” he said with a soft nudge.

Shaking his flaps into place, Toothless walked forwards, murring low in his throat as he drew closer to Elsa. She watched him fearfully, but did not back away or turn to panic, even when Toothless stood before her and looked up into her eyes.

She murmured something, but it was indistinct behind her hand, then reached down and slowly extended her shaking hand in his direction. As soon as her fingers were straightened enough, Toothless butted into her hand and chirped, and Elsa seemed to crumble at the touch.

“Elsa!” Hiccup cried out as she fell to her knees, shoulders dropping even as her hand remained resting on Toothless’s nose. He hurried over, but did not get there before Toothless turned to wrap his body around Elsa, extending one wing to tent over her head.

Hiccup could see Elsa through the gap between Toothless’s wing and the top of his head; the ice was even more stark against the black of the Night Fury’s skin, and Elsa sobbed into her other hand, a low desperate sound that was shaken from her in small bursts. Dropping to his knees just outside the curl of Toothless’s body, Hiccup put his hand over Elsa’s, ready this time for the shock of her skin, and waited for her tears to die down enough that she could speak again.

“I’m sorry,” were the first words that she managed, as the ice began to crawl back into itself and fade away from her clothes. Small holes appeared in the sleeves of her shirt, becoming worse as they progressed towards her cuffs, and a complete ragged hole appeared in the fabric over her heart. She did not seem to notice, but Hiccup quickly averted his eyes and pulled his right arm free of his vest, ready to pull it off the other side as soon as he dared take away his hand from hers.

“Don’t be,” he said firmly. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s all right. Just breathe.”

He remembered, very faintly in the deep vaults of his memory, Gobber saying similar words. Hiccup had only been young, and should have been asleep, but late at night he had heard soothing words drifting up the stairs.

Around them, the air slowly grew warmer. He waited again, until Elsa could breathe more clearly, and when she swallowed a yelp and he heard her move he guessed that she had just realised what had happened to her shirt. “Let me,” he said, pulling his arm away just long enough to peel off his vest and push it in her direction. His cloak was down in the academy, but he could not get back there without Toothless and did not want to leave Elsa completely on her own.

“Thank you.” The vest was taken from his hands, and he waited a few seconds before looking up to see that Elsa had pulled it tightly around herself. It did not quite meet in the centre of her chest, but covered up most of her skin, and he figured that the top was probably more important than her ragged sleeves or the complete destruction of her boots.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he said.

At first, Elsa did not answer, shrinking in on herself beneath the shadow of Toothless’s wing, then she took a shuddering breath. “The...” she waved her hand in what might have been the direction of the academy. “My sister liked it so much. We would share, when we had any.”

He nodded, and put his hand over hers again.

“I had not smelled it since. Had not thought of it. And then...”

Words failed her again, and for a moment the temperature of the air dipped, then Elsa swallowed and her hand twitched beneath Hiccup’s.

“It’s all right,” he said again. “You didn’t know you were going to come across chocolate again.”

“Chocolate. _Sulak_.” She reached up to push a stray lock of hair out of her face, and took a breath that was only a little bit shaky. With a soft chuff, Toothless put down the wing that he had been holding over her, though he did not moved from his curled-up position. “No, I did not think of it.”

It was an exceptional thing to see in Berk, a slip of Johann’s habits of knowing every scrap of cargo and Runa working with Astrid and Stormfly to produce so many hides that she had barely been able to process them all. It was a luxury beyond glass or silver. He doubted that chocolate had entered the Wildlands in the whole of their existence.

“You were right, you know,” he said gently. Elsa frowned, which he would have said was better than tears. “To keep your memories of your sister. No matter what that person in the Wildlands said.”

He saw fresh tears in her eyes, but there was no sob accompanying them, and he knew that sometimes they could be a release. Hiccup turned so that he was sitting down instead of kneeling, and wrapped his other arm around his knees.

“Those memories are a good thing, Elsa. I can see that you love your sister and that... that's _important_.” The present tense slipped out before he even thought about it, but he would stand by it. It was impossible to miss how much Elsa loved her sister still, how much moments like this crashed into her. “You're right to hold onto them.”

Elsa swallowed. “They hurt,” she whispered. Her eyes closed for a moment, and he wondered what she saw behind them, whether she was reaching for her childhood again or blocking it out. “I want to remember what is good, but all that I can see is...”

The both fell silent, and Hiccup brushed his thumb over the back of Elsa’s hand.

“The accident,” she said, finally. It was barely more than the sound of the wind. “It was her. It was… it was how the Silver Priests found me.”

He could hear something more there, a ghost behind her words, but could only let her say what she wanted to say. Pushing for more, he could feel in his gut, would only make things worse. He carefully squeezed her hand, and her fingers trembled but she did not pull away, eyes still fixed on a point just beyond Toothless's tail.

“It doesn't make the good ones less good. You just need to... separate them.” It was all that could be done; he had to remember Toothless like this, curled around Elsa, or sitting at his bedside, and not the wild creature that had blasted down the defence towers just last summer. He had to remember his father happy and helping the village to build, and not that terrible night when Stoick had been willing to cut Hiccup from his life.

Or, at least, he had to know that they were separate memories, that the good did not have to lead to the bad.

“I...” he swallowed. “I wish I had those memories. Of my mother.” If he closed his eyes, he could summon up the ghost of a face, light eyes and dark hair, but it was painted over the wooden bust that his father had long ago carved. “I think that I remember her. But sometimes it feels like what I'm remembering is other peoples' memories.”

The stories that Gobber told – or, so much more rarely, Stoick. Hiccup could hear his mother's voice when he read her journals, but he was not sure if it was her at all.

“I mean, it's better than nothing,” he said quickly. “I'd rather hear the stories, you know, about how she met my father, or the lullabies she sang, or how she watched the sky for dragon attacks...” There was almost curiosity in Elsa's expression, now, her breathing steadying and her eyes now on Hiccup instead. “My father remembers her. He doesn't talk about her much, but I know that he does. And memories, well, they're important.”

Most of his words had been addressed to where he clasped her hands, and finally he looked up to see that relief and gratitude and pain all mingled in Elsa's eyes. When he knelt up and reached over Toothless's head to hug her, she did not pull away, and leant her head against his for a moment until Toothless grumbled beneath them.

“Do you want to go back?” he said. Elsa’s shoulders stiffened. “Home, I mean. I sent the others away. I just need to pick up my cloak from the academy.”

Nodding, Elsa brushed the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand, and Hiccup wished that he had a handkerchief on him. Given the last moons, though, it was more likely to end up covered in Toothless’s saliva or Hiccup’s blood than anything else.

“All right,” said Hiccup. “Let’s go.”

She let him pull her to her feet again, other arm wrapping the vest tightly around her. The more practical part of him deeply hoped that his father was not going to be around to see this, but at least there would be something of an explanation this time around.

 

 

 

 

 

Several hundred nails and any number of trees went into the construction of the new stands around the academy. Though there had been circular benches that had been dragged out annually for the culmination of the training in the arena, but they were nothing compared to what was being made now, two proper rings of benches, one higher than the other, in sturdy pine that was not slightly creaky or wobbling at the edges when kicked accidentally. Or on purpose, for that matter.

Hiccup himself did not feel that he was all that helpful a lot of the time, as his role seemed to involve an awful lot of pointing at drawings and watching wood be steam-bent, but the dragons certainly proved themselves useful. Toothless, Stormfly and Hookfang – and Barf and Belch, borrowed while the twins were busy with calving at their parents’ farm – helped with lifting the largest timbers into place.

The academy was too small for the archery, Hiccup and his father had agreed that, but it was still large enough for axe or knife throwing, and most of the wrestling and tests of strength. Knattleikr within its confines, however, was likely to result in spectacular injury and thus not to be referenced in front of anyone who might think that it was a good idea.

It was strange to be involved in organising Thawfest, but perhaps stranger to not be frantically trying to train for at least on event in the last few days running up to it. It made his arms and legs feel unused. At least his mind was getting something of a workout, he supposed, as he argued with Gobber about angles and tensile strength while Spitelout put a hand over his eyes and sighed.

Officially, the academy took a break because the twins were busy with the yak calving and Fishlegs with helping his mother, but Hiccup had to admit that he was being kept busy as well. It was astonishing how finding a set of banners could take a whole day, but Phlegma had given them to someone else to store, who had handed them on again after their house burnt down last summer, who had passed them on again when something came up, and before Hiccup knew it he had to talk to a dozen people to get hold of half a dozen damn banners. At least Toothless did not object to helping him carry them.

He felt bad that he was not there to help Elsa get to grips with a bow again, but as she started spending increasing time with Astrid the guilt was somewhat assuaged. Astrid was definitely better with a bow than Hiccup was, and her teaching had seemed to work when he had been watching. One morning, Astrid had also breezily talked about teaching Elsa the rules of knattleikr, though Hiccup had not been so sure how that might end up going.

The excitement grew almost palpable as spring wore on, the weather still improving and the days becoming noticeably longer. By the time that the spring equinox due near, Hiccup heard laughter and singing from houses when he went flying in the early evening.

Stoick was happier than Hiccup had seen him since before Dagur had arrived. He made jokes over dinner, kept rather than disposed of a carved wooden duck that went terribly wrong and looked like no creature known to man, and even managed to get himself caught planting a kiss on Gobber’s cheek before he left the house one morning. He blushed behind his beard when he realised that Hiccup had seen, and hurried away, but it was still a sign of his good mood.

“He does realise that I’m old enough to have figured all this out?” said Hiccup, pointing a thumb towards the door as it closed behind Stoick.

“As I recall, you wouldn’t look either of us in the eye for days.”

Although Hiccup had always _known_ , in a background sort of way, about Gobber’s relationship with his father, there had indeed been the moment when everything had fallen into place and he had realised the full meaning of things. That had been some years ago now, though. Laughing, Hiccup trotted down the stairs, getting a feel for how his leg was going to be today. Things looked optimistic.

“So,” Gobber continued. “Just you and me today. Spitelout and some of the others are heading into the forest to get some huge log for the strength tests. They’re taking that Nightmare with them, so goodness knows what they’re going to come back with.”

“Sounds like someone’s been listening to the sagas again,” said Hiccup. “Probably means we can get everything finished though, right?”

“If Holsen stops shouting at us for taking his workers, of course. Watch that, will you?” Gobber waved vaguely at the cauldron, and Hiccup wandered over to take over making sure that the house did not burn down from an embarrassingly non-dragon-related incident. “You know that your father has assumed that you’re agreeing to watch over some of the events, you know,” he added, as he disappeared into the pantry. “Figures you would have said no by now.”

For every day that Hiccup went without saying no, he found himself more secure in the idea of saying yes. “Looks like,” he said.

Toothless stuck his head into Elsa’s room and chirped. She greeted him softly, then Toothless backed out of the room and the door was closed behind him. Huffing, he sat down and stared at her door.

“Bud, you saw her last night,” said Hiccup. “It’s not like we’ve been at sea for nine months.”

Toothless snorted. He had clung to Elsa the evening after her panic over the chocolate, and on some evenings since had sat with his head practically in her lap. Hiccup suspected those had been her worse days. She seemed to have improved a lot since, though, with a string of good days behind her. He hoped that it would only continue as spring built.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter. When the hell did that happen?
> 
> We're about to meet a familiar (Frozen) face, as well.

“All right. Foot into the stirrup, that’s it, and just... try pushing it down and feeling for the positions. That’s it.”

He did not know what it was that had finally persuaded Elsa to agree to learn how to control Toothless’s tail, but he was not going to push his luck to ask. It was enough that Elsa had not just agreed but had been the one to approach him; the occasional conversations they had been through in the winter, about how Hiccup wanted more people to learn to fly generally and to learn to fly with Toothless in particular, had all trailed off.

Perhaps they could have picked a better day than the one before Thawfest, but at the very least it got them out of the way of people shouting at inanimate objects, shouting at each other, and occasionally shouting _to_ each other about the feast that was to be taking place at the Great Hall tonight. Being in the air sounded better than being on the ground, and it was a distraction besides from the nerves that had been building in Hiccup as Thawfest grew closer and closer.

Screw up taking part in Thawfest, and you wouldn’t be the first or the last. Screw up helping his father to run it, and it probably would be the only time in the history of Berk it would ever happen.

Yes, thinking about flying Toothless was definitely better. He talked Elsa through the different positions of the tail, suspecting that it would suit her memory than Astrid’s more as-they-went-along way of learning. He was right, and it was no time at all before they were in the air, cutting lazy circles above Berk with Toothless rumbling occasionally beneath them.

“So,” said Hiccup. “Is taking the reins that much different from riding along?”

Elsa frowned at him over her shoulder.

“Sorry. Is it different to be in control of the flying, not just... riding behind someone? Reins are...” he gestured vaguely. “Ropes they use to control horses, turn them from side to side. They can use their weight, like we do with the dragons, but they use reins as well.”

“I think I remember seeing people ride horses,” said Elsa.

“Apparently they had them on Berk, a long time ago, but... dragons.” Hiccup shrugged. He could not blame them, considering everything that had happened; horses were large and significantly less hairy than yaks. “Plus they’re not all that hardy. Too expensive to keep.”

They liked them in Arendelle, and for the most part they worked on cobbled streets and in fields. In the snow of the Wildlands, ice traders like the one who braved Berk preferred the sturdier and stronger reindeer. But horses in general were a far more southern thing, and not something that many Viking islands made much use of.

“Besides,” he added, “horses don’t fly like this.”

Elsa chuckled, eyes fixed on the sky ahead of them again as if she was trying to pick a trail through the forest. He could feel the tension in her body where she sat in front of him, and from time to time she would purse her lips and breathe out slowly, but she held her nerve and Toothless, of course, responded well beneath her.

“So, how does it feel to fly?” he said.

“I have been on dragons often.”

“That wasn’t flying, though. Not like this,” said Hiccup, running his hand over Toothless’s side. For all that he was on Toothless’s back, he did not feel like he was flying at that moment, not with his left foot dangling and the saddle not quite comfortable beneath him.

There was no reply, and he was just start to wonder if he had said something wrong when the horn sounded. Hiccup’s head snapped round, but the sound was almost jaunty, three short blasts and two long. A summer sound.

“We need to land,” said Hiccup. “That’s the ice seller having been spotted.”

He was about to remind Elsa of the foot position when she started their descent herself, at a rather more sedate pace than Astrid had preferred. “You sell ice?” she said, on their way down.

“We buy it from the ice seller. The ice harvesters are... well, we think of them as Arendellen, but I don’t think they do. They aren’t Vikings, though. They cut really good, pure ice from the mountains, and we mostly use it for the ice houses. Don’t want any contamination if we’re going to be freezing food with it.”

They did not get through anywhere near as much as Arendelle, of course, and only one ice trader came their way nowadays. Like Johann, though, he had a captive audience and seemed wise to it.

“They come from the Wildlands?”

The question bought Hiccup up short. He had known that, of course he had known that, but he had never really considered the full implications. The ice traders weren’t _Wildlings_ , their way of life was totally different, but Hiccup had never thought to try to find out just how much they knew about the Wildlands. He wondered whether his father had asked, and how much the taciturn iceman had been willing to say.

“They travel through them,” he said, feeling as if he was blustering. If Elsa noticed, she did not point it out. “We should probably keep Toothless out the way, though. Didn’t think to talk to my father about talking to the ice seller about dragons,” he added, with a groan at himself.

With a gentle touch, Elsa steered them down to land behind the house, smooth as silk. She stroked Toothless’s head and murmured something to him, earning a rumble in response. Smiling, Hiccup climbed out of the seat from behind her, catching himself after only one stumble, and drew his cane. Although he was getting better at walking without it, he did not want to take any risks with Thawfest just around the corner.

“Come on, bud, let’s get you inside. You want to come meet this ice trader?” he said to Elsa, without even thinking.

She pressed her lips together, hands tightening on Toothless’s saddle for a moment, and he had to admit that this was not the same as Trader Johann with his spices and weapons. A man who dealt in ice, and came from Arendelle, might be different.

“You don’t have to,” added Hiccup. “It’s not as big of an event as Trader Johann.”

“Thank you,” said Elsa, with a bow of her head. She climbed down on the opposite side to Hiccup. “I think I will take Toothless inside.”

“Well, someone needs to keep an eye on him.”

 

 

 

 

 

There was not a flurry of activity for the ice trader’s arrival, not like Johann. His first visit of the year usually came around Thawfest, and though Berk paid him well enough it was generally up to Stoick to make the trade, and then anyone who wanted ice would pay him back.

Hiccup made his way to the usual clearing, not at all surprised that his Phlegma had beaten him there. The ice trader was a young man, tall for an Arendellen but still only at about Stoick’s shoulder, with short blond hair and the sort of direct manner which Hiccup preferred to Johann’s rambling. The sled he used was a little old and rickety, but he had a way of lashing the ice in place which seemed to defy gravity.

“Surprised to see you so early in the year,” Phlegma was saying. “Usually it’d be a few days yet.”

The young man shrugged, pulling a carrot from his pocket and offering it to the reindeer, who took a hearty bite. The carrot looked a bit skinny and ragged, but was still orange at least. “Got a good run. Sven’s good with the passes.”

“Hey,” said Hiccup, raising a hand in greeting as he drew closer. Phlegma waved back, and the iceman nodded with only a momentary glance at Hiccup’s cane and leg. “My father getting the payment?”

“Yup,” said Phlegma. “I was just letting Kristoff know that he’d caught us on the hop,” she said, with a gesture to the young man. He took a bite of carrot for himself, and offered the rest to the reindeer again. “Stoick’s got everything set aside though, right?”

Unless Gobber had moved it while looking for one of his hands, but Hiccup chose not to voice that particular thought. “Yeah, it should be within easy reach. How was the journey here?” he asked Kristoff.

The ice trader shrugged. “Not bad. The weather was good.”

In the height of summer, Kristoff had been known to turn up all but once a moon while the weather managed to be warm enough to justify it. However he travelled through the Wildlands, Hiccup realised, he had to be doing it quicker than just about any Berkian could manage.

“Good time of year to be a reindeer, huh?” he nodded to the creature whom Kristoff stood beside.

Kristoff exchanged a glance with the reindeer, who then proceeded to sniff at his pockets hopefully. “No, no more carrots,” said Kristoff, his tone friendlier with the animal than with Phlegma or Hiccup. Then again, Hiccup supposed, he must spend more time with the reindeer. “But Sven can always handle the weather, no matter how bad it gets.”

Hiccup did not have any real experience with judging whether a reindeer was healthy or not, but he would be willing to bet money that Sven was. His coat was glossy and even, eyes bright, antlers still in velvet as they grew back in again. He snuffled at Kristoff’s side, and Kristoff pushed him away good-naturedly.

Before he could calculate whether he could get away with asking about the Wildlands, his father shouted a greeting from further down the slope, and Hiccup turned to acknowledge the chief’s reappearance. Even Kristoff straightened up from leaning against his sled as Stoick trudged up the hill, trunk under one arm, with a handful of people behind him that he had probably rounded up along the way. Even if he’d known Hiccup was coming, it was not as if Hiccup was going to be much use moving the blocks of ice.

“Here we go,” said Stoick, setting the trunk down on the ground and then pulling a small leather pouch from his belt. “As promised. Sorry about the delay, I wasn’t expecting you in so soon.”

“It’s fine,” Kristoff replied off-hand. He weighed the pouch in his hand, and pulled open the top just far enough to glance in; not judgemental, just practical. With a nod, he tucked it inside his tunic and crouched down in front of the chest, pausing to rap on it with his knuckles. “Is this part of the payment?” he said, without looking up.

“Aye. Good-quality elm, and our best smith made the fittings. White wool, ten ells by two, the hides as usual, four good-quality knives, and the _Sidaal_.”

The cost of the ice stayed the same year on year, so that they could prepare their payment in advance. That was something that Kristoff had agreed on the first year that he had been here, though he could not have been much older then than Hiccup was now. Maybe it was to be efficient, or maybe he just didn’t like being around people. For the first few moons, Stoick had invited him to stay for a hot meal, but he had refused and said that he should get going again. The offer had been quietly dropped after that.

“Right, thanks.” Kristoff opened the trunk, glanced over the objects inside, then closed it and put the latch carefully into place again. He slid it onto the seat of the sled, beside a smaller, messily-wrapped parcel – food, perhaps – and grabbed a pair of sturdy gloves. “Let’s get this ice off.”

Stoick gestured to two of the women behind him, who had a rolled-up whaleskin over their shoulders. There was a good bit of flat ground in the clearing, shaded by trees for most of the day, and they spread out the whaleskin across it as Kristoff waved for one of the others to help him back up the sled so that they were right beside each other.

With more gestures than actual words, Kristoff arranged everyone into a line to get the ice off the sled and packed up as efficiently as possible. He didn’t need to bother asking whether Hiccup was going to be joining them. Feeling more than a little superfluous again, Hiccup wandered over to the reindeer and held out a hand to be sniffed, as he had in previous years.

The reindeer sniffed his hand eagerly, then pulled up and snorted, shaking his head. Oh Thor, maybe coming over smelling of dragon had not been the best idea. Hiccup backed way as well, as Kristoff straightened up sharply and fixed Hiccup with a decidedly warning look. “What’s going on up there?”

“Sorry!” Hiccup called. “Came straight from cooking, hah.”

“Yeah, back up if you don’t want to get kicked,” said Kristoff. He didn’t wait to see whether Hiccup did so before going back to the task at hand.

Hiccup gave Sven an apologetic smile while the reindeer regarded him with an expression that was outright unimpressed. It was a curiously intelligent expression to see on anything other than a human or a dragon, and Hiccup was probably responding with a rather less intelligent gawp. Cautiously, Hiccup extended a hand and stepped over again, and this time the reindeer sniffed him over more slowly, nostrils twitching and sending hot breath rushing up Hiccup’s sleeve. He didn’t snort again, though, and as Hiccup stepped closer to give him a scratch behind the ears he continued sniffing around Hiccup’s side instead.

“There we go,” said Hiccup. “Not that bad after all.”

“All right!” Stoick called, on the far side of the sled, as he admired the pile of ice now in front of him. “Looks good. You’re sure you won’t be waiting for a while to restock, Kristoff?”

“No, Chief Stoick,” Kristoff said. “But thank you.” He still had odd Arendellen inflections sometimes, and using Stoick’s title and name together was one of them. Without waiting for much in the way of goodbyes, he stripped off his gloves and tossed them onto the seat of the sled, walking round to the reindeer again. “Come on, Sven, let’s get you in tack.”

“Oh, right.” Hiccup backed up again, in case Kristoff got suspicious about the lack of cooking smell which he had claimed, then hurried over to his father’s side. He threw aside worrying about how he looked and grabbed Stoick’s sleeve like a child. “Dad, can I have a word?”

“Hmm?” murmured Stoick, probably the closest to quiet that he could get. “Of course.”

Releasing the sleeve, he waved his father a few paces away from the others. “Are we going to tell Kristoff about the dragons?”

Stoick sighed.

“Look, what if next time he comes in, we don’t see him early enough for us all to land? I was the only one in the air this time, but Toothless is pretty visible when the sky’s like this.” Hiccup waved to the pearl-grey clouds that sat high in the sky that day. “Besides, I’m more ready to trust him than I am to trust Dagur.”

“He’s only in Berk a half-dozen days a year, Hiccup,” said Stoick. “He’s in Arendelle a lot more. And trusting someone more than Dagur isn’t the greatest of stretches.”

That, Hiccup would have to grant. He snorted, grinding the foot of his cane into the grass at their feet. “If he sees them–”

“Then we will have to explain. But for now... Arendelle has their secrets.” Stoick looked out to the Wildlands briefly. “I think it prudent that we keep ours.”

 

 

 

 

 

Stoick put considerable effort into making sure that as much of the ice as possible went into ice houses, and as little as possible into games like whatever it was that Spitelout and his friends were doing when they smashed lumps of it over each other’s heads. The rest of the day was mostly a matter of ushering people in the right direction and asking Hiccup and Toothless to do one last lap of the area around Berk, before the sun set, to make sure that the flags marking the paths of the endurance runs were still in place.

The feast that night was less raucous than many could be, everyone knowing that the end of Thawfest was the real celebration. Stoick had not yet revealed which events would be taking place on each day, in the hope of stopping people from getting too drunk and attempting to do hour-long runs while hungover. Hiccup thought that sort of decision would be a fair handicap, but that might have been why he was not in charge of the matter.

Gobber, of course, had no fear of getting drunk with a variety of the other men and women who would more likely be waiting for Stump Day to show off their skills. It sounded as if Hoark had quite a nice baritone.

Instead, the prime focus of the night quickly turned to laying bets on the various events that were to come. Hiccup wove between the tables with Toothless in his wake, scanning everyone’s heads and ignoring the boasting and bartering going on around him, until he saw the distinctive white-blonde of Elsa’s hair. Sure enough, she was sitting with Astrid and the others, while the twins jabbed knives between each other’s fingers and Smokey sat on the table looking hopefully at the nearby sausages.

“Anyway,” Snotlout said, puffing his chest out. “My Dad says that it’s about time I started to shave.”

“Shave what?” Astrid looked him over derisively. “Your armpits?”

Snotlout blustered as the others laughed, and Smokey took the opportunity to liberate a piece of bacon. He made an ineffectual swat at the Terror, who only sniffed his fingers in response.

“Don’t bother,” said Astrid. “My mother’s got a few choice names for that one.”

“So.” Hiccup dragged over a chair and nudged it into the gap at the corner of the table. “Everyone excited for the beginning of Thawfest tomorrow?”

“You are gonna miss some serious annihilation,” said Snotlout. He took a huge bite out of a chicken leg as if to punctuate his point.

“Yeah, it’s going to be a pity that he’ll miss me annihilating you in the axe throwing,” Astrid said, with a challenge in her smile. She turned to Hiccup. “He won’t even take my bet on it.”

“I just don’t want to compound the humiliation,” Snotlout said, through a mouthful of meat.

Astrid had by far the better reactions with an axe in her hand; she could hit multiple targets in succession, throw from a running start, and make snap decisions with blinding accuracy. But in a simple static throw, like the Thawfest Games, she lost a lot of that advantage. She’d only won three out of four of the last axe-throwing events, after all.

“So let me guess,” said Hiccup to Astrid, “you’re doing as many events as you can fit in?”

“You better hope Stoick’s spread out the events enough.”

“I doubt you’ll be the only one trying to sweep the board. We might get more people in the adults’ group this year, though. I heard that your father’s planning to get some of his friends in on the strength ones,” said Hiccup, with a nod in Snotlout’s direction.

Licking his lips, Snotlout nodded back as he examined the chicken leg and apparently decided it was clean enough. He gave the Terrible Terror a considering look, then sighed and handed over the bones. Smokey was purring as he crunched them down.

“Hookfang bought back the biggest log yet,” said Snotlout, through the last of his chicken. “It’s a _beast_. They should give him a medal just for getting it.”

Hiccup had seen the log in question, set in a huge wooden frame in the academy, about six feet off the ground. It still had the stubs of branches attached, and was some twenty feet long, with ropes lashed around it to act as handholds. It looked like the base of one of the great torches they had used to raise against the dragon attacks, but which had long since been chopped up and the timber used elsewhere.

“Hey,” said Tuffnut. He absent-mindedly fended off Ruffnut’s attempts to continue her five-finger fillet on him. “Maybe we should have dragon events. Like they should have a strength contest.”

“Psh, Hookfang would totally dominate you all.”

“I think Meatlug would have a good chance.”

“Well, I’m not surprised you didn’t suggest a race. Stormfly’s been outpacing you since day one,” said Astrid, with a very decisive snap of an oatcake.

Hiccup caught Elsa’s gaze across the table and rolled his eyes. She giggled, almost hiding it behind her hand but not quite bothering nowadays. It was impressive how Thawfest could reduce even adults to bickering and laying bets like children.

“This year, we’re totally going to win the knife throwing,” said Ruffnut. Tuffnut nodded along eagerly.

“Last year, you got banned from throwing events,” Fishlegs pointed out. “You almost hit Stoick!”

“He caught the axe,” said Tuffnut with a shrug.

“You know, axe-catching should totally be an event.” The twins looked at each other, eyes gleaming, as Ruffnut spoke the words with slow awe.

“We’re not adding new events,” said Hiccup. Some of the ones that they had were really bad enough, and he had yet to see a game of knattleikr that did not end with at least a colourful array of bruises and some bloody noses. “For humans or dragons. My father has already planned everything for this year, and I do not think he would appreciate being asked to add new events at this late stage. Besides, I’m sure there are plenty of events to keep you interested.”

“The diving does sound good,” Ruffnut admitted.

“You realise that’s not scored, right?” said Snotlout.

“I know. But it still sounds _awesome_.”

Diving off the cliffs and into the still-cold water of the Berk shore was restricted to the adult groups, and though it was not an official event it was a very popular one. Stoick usually left it to the very end of the Thawfest Games, so that people were free to endanger themselves as much as they wished. Whoever dared to jump from the highest ledge was usually considered the winner, even if it was unofficial.

“Yeah,” said Fishlegs, “I was thinking something more like the strength events. I... think that I might have a chance at some of the events.”

“Good on you, Fishlegs!” Hiccup said, gesturing with his fork. “I think you’ve got a real shot with the atlas stones. Those are going to be in the academy this year as well. The log toss is outside, of course, but we’ve moved some of the strength ones inside.”

“Aww,” said Snotlout, “looks like there’ll be an audience for your humiliation, Codface.”

“Keep talking, Snotlout. I don’t think you can put your muscles where your mouth is.”

Snotlout looked surprised that Fishlegs talked back to him, and Hiccup could not help but grin approvingly. The strength events were mostly not flashy, and arguably less exciting to watch, but there were plenty of them and they were respected.

“What about you, Elsa,” said Astrid. “You decided if you want help these guys embarrass themselves in any of the events?”

Bread midway to her mouth, Elsa froze, then looked up slowly. Astrid’s expression was gentle, though, curious rather than interrogating, and Elsa put down the food again and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I was thinking the rock climbing,” she said.

“You should join us for the knattleikr. Lars is getting a team together, and he asked me if I’d captain a team against him.”

There were usually only one or two games of knattleikr, depending on the size of teams that the captains gathered together. Hiccup knew that some of the older adults, the over-twenty-one cut off that they had borrowed from Arendelle, were looking to set up two teams, but he had not known that Lars had challenged Astrid.

“Yeah, you totally should,” said Tuffnut, slamming his knife into the table. It might have been more dramatic had it not been hilt first, but Elsa still jumped. “It’s gonna be _epic_.”

“You’re on Lars’s team,” said Astrid.

“We are?” he looked at his sister. “Are we?”

Ruffnut shrugged.

“Should be an interesting game,” said Fishlegs mildly. Hiccup could only agree with that summation.

 

 

 

 

 

Dawn was breaking, thin and pale, as Hiccup made his way up to the academy with his father. He could have flown, but that felt unfair while his father was still walking and going over the much-corrected and scribbled-on plan of the events for the next four days. Toothless bounded back and forth across the path, sniffing at everything and examining every new cluster of flowers that had sprung up.

“This,” said Stoick, producing a second, folded piece of parchment and handing it over to Hiccup, “is what will be happening in the arena. You’ll have Gobber with you if you need an extra voice for shouting, but people know that you’re doing this. You’ll be fine,” he added, as if he could sense the uncertainty that still roiled under Hiccup’s skin.

That was, of course, the second reason for not flying. If he climbed onto Toothless’s back now, it would be tempting to wheel away and put the leagues between himself and Berk. He had also left off Toothless’s saddle, and was carrying it under one arm instead. Just in case they needed it, but not ready enough to make that impulsive escape too possible.

“And you’ve got Bucket and Mulch, right?”

“Aye, I’ve got Mulch to give me a hand,” said Stoick. Bucket was more part and parcel of that, although he was far better than some would expect at breaking up fights. Mostly by picking one party off the ground, but still. “It’s more running today, none of the swimming events. I’ve tried to keep them all together, and let Gothi know we’ll be on the shore that day.”

“We’re Vikings. We can handle the cold,” said Hiccup, not really listening as he scanned the list of events in the academy. “No mention of that log?”

“That’ll be at the end of the Games, if anybody wants to try.”

Well, at least that would put the sore backs and pulled muscles at the end of Games, instead of the beginning. Stoick opened up the gates to the arena while Hiccup finishing reading the plans, before they both started round to the largest seats, backed with banners, that had been placed in the centre of the ring of benches around the academy.

“All right,” said Hiccup. He went to sit in the small seat to the left of the main one. Gobber would take the one on the right, and the one on the centre was reserved for Stoick whenever he was looking over an event here. He did not manage to turn all the way around before a hand caught him by the collar. With a strangled yelp, Hiccup worked to not fall over, then backed up so that he could see his father again. “What?”

Stoick gestured to the central chair.

“Ah-hah, no,” said Hiccup. “No, no, no. That is your chair.”

“It is the chair for the person overseeing the Thawfest events,” said Stoick. “And that would be you.”

“I am just helping.” It really was not easy to squirm out of his father’s grip, but Stoick had many years of practice keeping hold of Hiccup. “I’m not overseeing.”

“You are overseeing these events.” Stoick steered Hiccup firmly in the direction of the large central chair. “And flanking an empty chair will make it look like I’ve died.”

That was a bit of a low blow, and Hiccup scowled. “I’ll be drowned in that chair! Toothless would fit in it better!”

At the sound of his name, Toothless looked up from where he was sticking his head under the benches, and chirped. He jumped up onto the benches and padded over to look at the chairs.

Stoick sighed, released Hiccup, and clasped his hands together. “Hiccup,” he said, more gently, “I appreciate that you’re nervous about this, but everything will be all right. You know how Thawfest works, and more importantly everyone else knows how Thawfest works as well. Mostly you just need to... give them a prod in the right direction every now and then, and send a runner for Gothi if needed. Duskhowl will be here too, she’s got plenty of healing knowledge, so hopefully you won’t need Gothi anyway.”

They rarely did, to be fair. It was usually sprained ankles or wrists, or knocked heads if someone fell over. Hiccup still did not particularly want to have to deal with that.

Carefully, Stoick patted Hiccup on the shoulder. “You can do this, Hiccup, I know it.”

“Is the next step where you threaten to tie me to the chair?”

“If you don’t sit down, then yes, it might well be.”

Somehow, that was easier to deal with than the threat of emotion that Hiccup could feel in the air between them. With a sigh that might have been exaggerated for effect, Hiccup turned and slid down into the chair. He kept to one side, leaning on the arm and trying not to feel too much like some boy king on an oversized throne. “Better?”

Stoick nodded.

Hiccup took a deep breath as he saw the first figures of people on the path to the academy. “All right. Let’s do this.”


	40. Chapter 40

By the middle of the first day, nothing was actually on fire. Hiccup would consider that a successful start to any Thawfest Games on Berk.

There had been some complaints about holding many of the events on the deadlands behind the academy, not in the village green, but there had been more support for the idea than Hiccup had expected, and he found it oddly touching to see Hoark cuffing someone alongside the head with one of his crutches over the matter.

It made sense, though. With the sprints being done outside at the same time as the skin-throwing was being done inside, there were plenty of people going back and forth to try to catch the exciting parts of both, or at least watching the skin-throwing between the fast, tightly-fought, hundred yard races.

Hiccup wondered whether his father had chosen to start with skin-throwing because it was not something that was immediately won or lost. There were twelve in the age group who were at least eleven, but not yet adults; two teams of six, even if it was never quite possible to balance the individual year groups. In the good weather, all of them played in lightweight wool or linen tunics, with green sashes on one team and reddish on the other.

Everyone knew the game. Hiccup had even seen something like it being played in the streets of Arendelle, though with rather less aggression than was common among Vikings. Speedifist Axeson and Froglegs stepped up first for the red-sashed team, and the green-sashed team set to tossing around the wrapped-up sheepskin, around or over them, to shouts of encouragement from the people watching. Unlike in Arendelle, the Viking game was full-contact, and it was not long before Speedifist tackled Gustav Larsen to the ground, to cheers from the spectators, before rolling back to her feet and launching herself after the skin again. In return, Wartihog Eldsen made sure to throw her to the ground on the next opportunity, but it was all within the rules and all that Hiccup could do was sigh and keep an eye on the game to be sure that it did not descend into violence that _completely_ ignored the existence of the skin.

Finally, Speedifist got a hand to the skin to knock it out of the air, and Froglegs pounced on it to scoop it up.  In place of the shouting that Stoick normally used to announce the end of an event, Hiccup had decided to spare his throat, and inside gave a long, sharp blast on the whistle he had bought with him.

All of the kids looked at him in confusion.

“That means stop, you numpties!” provided Gobber, and although it could have been better phrased Hiccup could not help agreeing with the sentiment. “Next two, come on!”

Breathless and grinning, Speedifist and Froglegs swapped with the next two members of their team. As the green-sashed team huddled round and talked in hushed tones, Hiccup noted how many turns of the timer it had taken for the skin to be caught, and wrote it down in view of people so that there could be no claim that he was being unfair. The timer was the only one on Berk, a tube of glass pinched in the middle so that sand could trickle back and forth through it in a set length of time. Somewhere along the way, someone had scored three lines into each half of the glass to split it into quarters again. It was Stoick’s, traded many summers ago, and had apparently made some of the events in the Thawfest Games a damn sight easier to judge.

By the time that the second and third rounds had been through, Nobber was nursing a split lip and Wartihog the beginnings of a black eye, but all were still laughing and ribbing the opposite team as they went along. The second half of the game would be tomorrow morning, when they were all fresh again. They had been doing this for some years now anyway, and though there were always some people who had just become old enough for new events it was spread out enough that it was never complete chaos.

Which was also quite a feat for Berk, if truth be told.

Stoick reappeared just as the second round of the game for those between seven and ten was being set up – eighteen of them this year, which meant two groups of nine and three at a time in the centre – and leant on the back of the chair where Hiccup sat.

“Everything going well?”

“It... looks like,” said Hiccup, not wanting to jinx it.

“Excellent! So...” Stoick started to say something else, then trailed off as his eyes fell on the chair next to Hiccup. “Hiccup, why are you sitting next to a stuffed lamb?”

“If I’m going to pretend to be you, then I need someone to pretend to be me,” he said. “The lamb volunteered.”

Stoick just sighed.

“Rainbug worried that he’d get lost,” said Hiccup, just about resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He waved at the lamb, propped up in the seat and for all the world looking as if it, too, was overseeing the events below. “She was ill last year, remember, couldn’t take part? I told her I’d keep an eye on the lamb.”

For a moment, there was silence, and Hiccup winced and held his breath without looking up from where he sat. It would sound just like him to have gotten cocky after one morning and said something inappropriate to his father, after all.

“Perhaps that’s for the best,” said Stoick finally. Hiccup breathed again.

He did, however, follow it with levering himself upright, with no small amount of relief himself to escape the oversized chair. His feet were falling asleep, having barely scraped the ground even if he sat on the very edge, and the back was a constant looming presence behind him. When Stoick raised an eyebrow, Hiccup gave him the best look of innocence he could manage.

“It’s for whoever is overseeing the Games, remember? And I’m pretty sure that the Chief outranks the Chief’s son.”

With a sigh, Stoick sat down instead. He picked up the stuffed lamb in one hand, swapped it to the other, and placed it in Gobber’s chair instead before waving for Hiccup to take the seat on his left-hand side. “Skin-throwing turn to bloodshed yet?”

“No, and we might just make it to midday without one. Of course, once we get the adults playing this afternoon, all bets are off.” Last year Ruffnut had almost broken Tuffnut’s nose, and they were supposed to have been on the same team. This year everyone had generally given up, and they were to be placed on opposite teams for most things.

“Promises to be large teams. I think everyone wants to take on the dragon riders.”

“Please tell me that Astrid hasn’t taken that for a team name,” said Hiccup, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I’m not certain. She was trying to persuade Elsa onto her team, after the sprints, but I don’t know how successful she was.”

Last night, Hiccup had taken one last opportunity to talk to Elsa and remind her that she did not have to do anything that she did not want to, not even when it came to the Thawfest Games. Although most of those in their age group – adult, but not yet twenty-one – would be taking part, there were those who were not. Hiccup, of course, among them.

She had smiled, and thanked him, and from the warmth in her eyes he had felt sure that she was not lying when she said that she knew. Only then had he started to wonder whether she wanted to take part more than she would admit aloud, and whether Astrid’s coaxing was just encouraging a desire already seated there.

The realisation had made him feel a bit of an idiot. But at least he was used to that.

“She took part in the hundred yards, then?” he said. Stoick probably did not know about most of the back-and-forth that had been going on.

Stoick nodded, watching the teams below line up again. “Aye. Not a win, but she made a fair showing, especially less than a year after breaking an ankle.”

For that, he felt a surge of pride, mostly for Elsa but, if he was honest, also a little bit for the metal and leather frame which he had constructed to support her ankle as it healed. Her limp had been gone by Snoggletog, even if his was taking longer to deal with. “Good,” said Hiccup. “I hope she enjoyed it.”

“Didn’t even trip over Tuffnut when Ruffnut pushed him over, either.”

Well, that explained what some of the shouting had been about, at least. Hiccup rolled his eyes, wondered when the twins were ever going to learn, and then reminded himself that they were _the twins_ and the answer to that was probably ‘never’. “Let me guess: Astrid won the hundred and four hundred yards.”

“Of course I did,” said Astrid.

Hiccup looked round to see that she was leaning on the back of his chair, sweaty but grinning, with her usual garb swapped for a lightweight tunic, leggings, and even far lighter boots than usual. A rumble from Toothless, curled up behind the chairs, suggested that he was getting attention, and the soft laughter that accompanied it was definitely Elsa’s. “Snotlout finished insulting you yet?”

“Pft, he ran out of insults a while back. Snugbag took the hundred and four hundred in his age group,” she said, with a nod to the group below where the boy was talking with the rest of his team, “and Speedifist took the four hundred in hers, but Gustav took the hundred.”

“And your mother beat the other adults, as she does every year that she takes part,” concluded Hiccup. Astrid’s grin said it all. There had been years when they were children that Runa had not taken part – he had been too young to understand at the time, but in hindsight it was almost certainly the doomed pregnancies, or illness afterwards, that had kept her away. But for the last eight years she had won almost every race, with a few losses in the sprints but almost every one-mile and literally every thirteen-mile going to her.

Stoick cleared his throat. “Right, looks like we’re ready to go.”

He drew in a deep breath, clearly readying himself to shout, but Hiccup quickly pushed himself upright and put his whistle to his lips. As the teams squared up, he let out a piercing blast, and with battle-cries worthy of any adult army they launched themselves at each other.

Stoick practically deflated, looking at Hiccup in shock. “Oh,” he said finally. “So that’s what that noise was.”

“Easier than shouting,” said Hiccup. He should probably be more apologetic about this, he realised a moment late. The whistle was one thing while Stoick was not here, but using it to override the chief was risking being out of line.

“I... suppose it is.”

Perhaps it was lucky that Gobber chose that moment to join them, his hand replaced with a flag for the day. He waved a greeting to them, then stopped at the sight of the stuffed lamb sitting in what had been his chair for the morning.

“What’s up with that, then?” said Gobber, pointing at the obvious.

“Dinner,” said Stoick, before Hiccup could even come out with an answer himself. Hiccup was actually impressed. “After your shenanigans last night and blaming it on bad mutton, I decided to make sure there was nothing wrong with it tonight.”

For a couple of seconds, Gobber looked as if he was concerned that Stoick was telling the truth, and that was the final straw. Hiccup started laughing, even as he forced himself to concentrate on the skin-throwing game going on below them, and from beside him he heard his father chuckle.

 

 

 

 

 

Given the choice between watching the archery and watching the adult teams take each other on in skin-throwing, most people were going for the latter. Not everyone among the adults took part like the children did, some seeing it as more of a child’s game, but those that did made sure to make it as brutal as any sparring match. As long as you could argue that you were fighting over the skin itself, and not just for the sake of it, you could get away with it. It had been a few years since the last broken arm, though.

So while the children were making use of their shortbows under Stoick’s patient supervision, Hiccup was watching Snotlout punch Luckless Svenson in the face over a ragged bundle of pigskin, and resisting the urge to hide his face in his hands in case he missed a foul.

Every so often Elsa, sitting beside him now, would wince. He couldn’t really blame her.

It was hard, as well, to look anywhere other than Astrid while she was competing. Energy burned in her, in the set of her brow and the tension that never quite unwound from her muscles, in the lithe moves as she ducked under an arm, dodged a grab from Snotlout and sent him wheeling to the ground, and thrust the ball so hard towards Lars Thorston that she almost knocked him off his feet as well.

But team games were team games, and it was more popular than ever this year, twelve people on each side coming up in teams of four to fight for their prize. And that meant trying to watch sixteen people at a time, though mercifully at the moment only one of the twins.

It took several long turns of the timer before Snotlout finally managed to get hold of the ball, and Hiccup blew the whistle for them to finish. Snotlout immediately took to arguing with the rest of his team, not least Fishlegs, and after several attempts to shout over the noise Hiccup put the whistle to his lips and blew as hard as he could.

The shriek that tore itself from the whistle hurt his ears, and Toothless’s flinch stabbed him with guilt, but he did not have much choice. The fight below finally broke up, in no small part thanks to Astrid shoving Snotlout away from Fishlegs, and Hiccup walked right up to the edge of the bars to look down at them. It was strange to actually look down, and not up.

“Snotlout,” he said. “If you keep fighting with your own team, you will get a time penalty. Do it _again_ , and you’ll be disqualified. Am I clear?”

Snotlout looked at him in absolute astonishment. Either the whistle had given him some sort of special powers, Hiccup decided, or having Hiccup act as if he was in charge was only acceptable when it wasn’t in front of the rest of the village.

“Snotlout,” he said warningly.

Scowling, Snotlout nodded, thrust the pigskin in Astrid’s direction, and stalked off back to the sidelines. Well, this was just going swimmingly.

The other two rounds were about as violent as could be expected, especially when the twins ended up on the pitch at the same time. Then there was a hurried switch-round for the older adults – far fewer of them, barely scraping two teams of seven and with Smokefeet looking so disinterested that he must have been there to make up numbers. Hiccup was not at all surprised, however, to see Carr and Runa heading up a team together, nor to see them step up as the first pair to represent that team.

Shouting at his friends had been one thing, but he was truly nervous about having to act as if he was in charge of adults twice his age and more. Even with two sprints and the archery behind her, Runa fought over the pigskin as if she was fresh on the field, and it was not at all hard to see where Astrid got her drive from. Carr was more solid, concerned with getting on with people and being a team player, while Runa fought to win from the beginning.

The advantage of the older teams was that there was only one Thorston involved, and that he was currently not in possession of any carving knives. Hiccup winced when Tuffnut Sr. got into any a fierce grapple with Runa, but his success in keeping the pigskin was short-lived as he stepped back, tried to heft it to one of his teammates, and Carr appeared seemingly out of nowhere to snatch it away to cheers of approval from the crowd.

Astrid was among them, whooping for her parents’ victory, and Hiccup smiled as he blew the whistle and took careful note of how quickly they had gained the skin. It was one of the faster times among the whole event, so far at least. She went to climb down into the arena to congratulate them, until Hiccup gave her a stern look and pointed to the stairs. With a roll of her eyes, she nonetheless complied and threw her hands in the air before turning and running down the steps to meet her parents at the main gates of the arena, clapping forearms with each one in turn and laughing. She exchanged hurried words, then Runa pointed back to their team with a shrug and Astrid nodded, backing away.

She did not reappear, and Hiccup was left in his oversized chair with Toothless watching from beside him. Considering Elsa had also disappeared, he guessed that she was also taking part in the shortbow archery, and wished for a moment that he could be there to see instead of here watching grown adults fight over a pigskin. Entertaining as it was, it was frustrating that he could not even cheer anyone on. Impartiality was the name of the game.

Even when Spitelout, apparently having forgotten the rules of participation after having helped Stoick out with overseeing for so long, took it upon himself to punch Tuffnut Sr. in the face. He really wished it was anyone other than family who had done that, but there you were. People always did say that you couldn’t choose them.

 

 

 

 

 

As if the weather itself got into the spirit of the event, somehow the rain held off. It varied how much sun actually got through the clouds, of course, but that was nothing compared to four days of dry weather, occasionally managed at this time of year but still enough of a rarity for people to start calling it a good sign.

Hiccup whirled from event to event, realising quickly enough that organising the Games was considerably more work than taking part in them, no matter how many events someone insisted on taking part in. There was nobody who did all of them, not even Astrid; they were meant to speak to a variety of strengths, and draw in as many people as possible. And, for the most part, it worked.

Runa swept the running, as usual, and the longer of the endurance swims. Astrid got second and third places almost across the board, and won the four hundred yards, but he could tell that she was frustrated that it was less than last year. He did not laugh, reminded her gently that they were now the youngest in their age groups again, and got punched in the arm for his troubles. So much for trying to be sympathetic.

There was always one big argument during Thawfest, usually about someone cheating and getting disqualified, but this year the clamour was about Runa’s new recurved bow when she entered the longbow archery. Stoick calmly explained that there was no rule against it, but it didn’t stop the protest from Firemarl that it was unfair to have one recurved bow among a sweep of normal longbows.

Runa offered calmly to start up a recurved bow archery event instead, but Firemarl had not seen the funny side. Only when Stoick put his foot down and pointed out that the main advantage of the recurved bow was power, not accuracy, did they finally relent.

After that, Hiccup found his father standing in the shade with a block of ice held to his forehead. It was not the first time the Thawfest Games had inspired such a desire.

He was delighted to see Elsa taking part in events – and, to judge by her laughter and flushed cheeks, enjoying herself as she did so. Though he did not get to see all of them, he was there to see her throwing spears and knives; he was overseeing the outside events, for once, while his father judged the strength inside the academy. He couldn’t bring himself to be at all offended by that. It was harder than ever to not pick a side when _Elsa’s_ was one of the options.

The low cliffs behind the academy, leading up to the deadlands, had been looked over and declared perfect for rock climbing – another of the reasons that people had been fairly easily persuaded to move the events there. The rock climbing was one of the favourite events, possibly _the_ favourite other than the melee, and Stoick had scheduled it so that nothing else clashed, giving everyone the opportunity to come and watch. There was an absolute throng around the academy, people turning round on benches to get a good view and children sitting on their parents’ shoulders, and for all that Hiccup was glad of the dais on which he stood, a large part of him wished that he could be down there cheering with the others.

There were twelve in their age group making the climb, and even that was probably going to be a tight squeeze at the bottom of the cliff before people started to pull ahead. Twelve starting points were chalked out, and numbers drawn at random to decide who would start where.

Elsa, nervousness clear on her features, drew her number last. Numbers she could handle – dots and lines were hard to misinterpret – but it was still easy to work out where to stand when it was the only space. Hiccup flashed her a smile, but she was shaking when she tried to reciprocate.

As the chief’s assistant, though, he could hardly be seen offering one person more encouragement than the rest, and all that he could do was watch as she lined up with the others. His heart sank when he realised that she was not only between Boulderdash – last year’s winner – and Snotlout, but right beneath a stretch of rock that included a marked overhang. Unless she went some distance out of her way, which would cost time, she would have to go through it.

As Stoick gave them their ready-up warning, she kicked off her shoes and rubbed her hands together, eyeing the wall. Hiccup could almost see the concentration wash over her, and saw as well the way that her shoulders squared and she began to look more calm. Though she wore a long-sleeved tunic, she had swapped her skirts for leggings rolled up around the ankle, and had pinned her Night Fury brooch on her left side once again.

“On your marks,” bellowed Stoick, and a hush fell over the waiting crowd for a moment. “Go!”

It was a bare-handed climb, no ropes or crampons or picks allowed, and though people hurried underneath with blankets just in case and more waited at the top with ropes ready to throw down to anyone tiring, rock-climbing was the only Thawfest event that had once ended in a death. Hiccup pressed his knuckles to his lips as he watched Elsa – and the others, he would swear, but mostly Elsa – start their climb, to the first whoops and hollers of encouragement from the watching crowd. Family ties came to the fore, followed by ship-mate and sword-brother alliances to those families for anyone who did not have a relative on the wall, but when Toothless roared with the crowd’s shouting Hiccup couldn’t help feeling that it was for Elsa.

“Come on,” he muttered. She climbing differently to some of the others, more fluid and faster movements, pushing herself up to reach handholds rather than getting them before climbing. Some of the handholds he could not even see, and once or twice he would swear that she placed the bare sole of her foot against the flat rock and nothing more.

But she was keeping abreast with Boulderdash, who glanced over at her and – though Hiccup could not see his expression from here – was probably surprised to judge by the way that he fumbled his next handhold and had to catch himself, to gasps and screams from the crowd below. Elsa pulled ahead a few precious feet, but she was facing the overhang and Hiccup held his breath as she reached for the next handhold, straightening out her arms to hang precariously from the rock, and pushing hard with bare feet where she braced herself against the stone.

He pressed his knuckles tighter to his lips. “Come on, Elsa.” All right, so it looked as if he wasn’t going to manage to be impartial on this one. Perhaps he should have been with the group waiting at the top of the cliff, to celebrate with whoever won. It would be harder to judge from up there exactly where they were, to get caught up in the moment. But then again, it would be harder to judge from up there exactly where they were, and that would probably drive him completely around the bend before they were half-way up.

There was less of an incline where Boulderdash was climbing, and he pushed through it faster, gaining back the feet and then pushing ahead. There was more shouting, more cheering, but Hiccup could not even make out individual words in it beyond being sure that someone was calling Boulderdash’s name. Then, from somewhere in the turbulent noise, he heard someone chanting Elsa’s name, then another someone, and looked over in amazement to see the twins completely ignoring their cousin Ardead and starting up the chant for Elsa which was now catching on, spreading, as it became increasingly clear that Elsa and Boulderdash were drawing away from the rest of the climbers.

Elsa made it through her overhang, to cheers, and went back to climbing with something approaching ferocity. She climbed fast and fluidly; at first Hiccup thought that her bank left was a mistake, but then her left hand wrapped into a crack that he had thought was just a shadow, and it was like opening up Toothless’s tail to watch her move. He was quite sure that she was barely glancing at where her left hand had to be, using the vertical crack, even as Boulderdash was still checking all four of his handholds no matter how fluidly he moved.

She closed in on him as the top loomed. The cheering from the crowds was almost frenetic now, the chant that the twins had started still weaving through the shouting and whooping. Hiccup went to get to his feet, only for his father’s arm to be flung in front of him to hold him back again, and even so he slid to the front of the chair and craned forwards, willing her on. She kept her eyes on the rock just ahead of her, only once or twice glancing up to the cliff edge and never over at Boulderdash, and though the shouting reached a fever pitch as she passed him, he was not even sure that she realised.

Finally, she reached the top, got a good grip on the edge and tested it before swinging herself over and rolling out of sight. The spectators lost any sense of calm to which even they as Vikings might have been able to retain, and were whooping and screaming, as Boulderdash fought on anyway because there were still people behind him, and second place was still worthy of talking about, but the people on the top were waving flags as well and Gobber was helping Elsa to her feet triumphantly.

Hiccup slipped out from behind Stoick’s arm and straight into Toothless’s saddle. After the first day, he had been less fearful of giving in and fleeing, and now he was grateful as he clipped into place before Stoick could do anything more than start to rebuke him, and dodged into the sky so fast that he left his breath behind.

The crowds at the top were much smaller than those at the bottom of the cliff, and they parted easily when Hiccup cut in to land on the ground behind them. Toothless bounded to a halt, and this time Hiccup was more successful in getting himself out of the saddle without falling over, stumbling as he threw himself onto his feet and pushed through the crowd towards Elsa.

She was looking around in bewilderment, hands pink and one palm scraped, as Gobber shook her hand enthusiastically and people whooped and kept stepping in to congratulate her. It took some judicious use of elbows to get to her, and Hiccup actually wished that he’d bought his cane at one point, but finally he was standing before her and able to grab her free hand, bringing her whipping round to face him.

“What is happening?” she said. “Where are the others?”

“You won!” he found himself laughing at the unspoilt bewilderment on her face, as she tried to peer around him. “The others are still climbing!”

He gestured towards the edge of the cliff, and Elsa stepped forward, frowning, to peer over it. Her eyes went wide as she turned back again, and Hiccup tugged her away from the edge with a laugh, then punched her hand up in the air in a sigh of victory. Another wave of cheering hit them from below.

“I won?”

For someone who had picked up more grammar in one moon than Snotlout could grasp even now, she did seem to have a bit of a blind spot when it came to competition. It was impossible not to laugh, but also to feel tenderly for her, and he squeezed her hand in his before punching it into the air again, this time where the people down below could see it.

“Yes,” he said. “You won. And that means bragging rights for at least the next year, or possibly longer if you remind people about breaking your ankle last summer. And did you seriously just do that barefoot?”

She looked sheepishly down at her feet. “I might have cut them doing it.”

“Honestly, that is so far from being the first bloodshed we’ve had this week. Let’s wait for everyone else to get up,” he said, as behind them Boulderdash grasped the edge of the cliff and hauled himself over, panting, muscles cording in his arms. “And then I’ll say that the winner gets a dragon ride down to the arena, and everyone else can walk to cool off.”

She giggled, hand over her mouth, then sobered as Boulderdash walked over towards her. He was tall even by Berk standards, almost Stoick’s height, though not half so heavily built. He looked her up and down with lingering disbelief, shaking his head, then stuck out his hand towards her.

“Well played. I’ve not seen anyone climb like that in a long while. You’ve worked overhangs before?”

Frowning, Elsa glanced over at Hiccup. He made a vague gesture with one hand, shaping a rocky overhang in the air, and she seemed to get the picture as she nodded and turned back to Boulderdash. “Not for a while. But I have climbed them before, yes.”

“Well,” he said, nodding. “That was nicely done. You’re not turning twenty-one next year as well, are you?”

Elsa shook her head, and he laughed.

“Good. That means I get at least a couple of years’ extra practice.” Boulderdash laughed, and Elsa smiled uncertainly. “No, really. Good job.” He clapped her on the shoulder, which to judge from Elsa’s stagger and look of surprise really was the first time that it had happened to her. At least _most_ of the other riders had some idea of moderation.”

“And look at it this way,” added Hiccup. “You helped Snotlout with that humiliation he was going on about.”

She laughed, just as the next hand started flailing over the top of the cliff and a cheer went up for whoever it was that had managed to make third place. Just because Berk was in the mood to cheer anything didn’t mean that things weren’t worth cheering, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

By the afternoon of the last day, a significant proportion of Berk was dripping wet from diving into the cliffs, and a not hugely different proportion of them may well have been drunk, now that they knew they had no more events to take part in and either in preparation for the dive or in order to feel warm afterwards. Wet hair plastered to their cheeks and clothes soaked through, people sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the benches, laughing and knocking their cups together. There had been no winner, exactly, more of a contest to see who had been willing to jump from highest on the cliff, and as always people had been over-confident and there were more than a few bruises from where they had hit the water hard. Luckily, though, there were no serious injuries this year.

The very last strength event, the atlas stones, had been its usual success, and Hiccup had never been more relieved to let his father be the one in charge than when faced with the idea of overseeing an event full of shirtless muscle-bound men – and women, although they tended to keep their shirts on – who could pick him up with one hand and most likely not even need all of their fingers to do so.

Besides, Hiccup knew that his father had won the strength events on a regular basis when he was young; Stoick had meant it as encouragement when Hiccup was first trying to take part, and despairing of even the arm wrestling or the dead lift that the youngest of the age groups was allowed to take part in. It had not really had that effect, but he had tried. And after all these years, Hiccup certainly could not begrudge him that.

Fishlegs was the only one of the riders who had refused to indulge in the apparently inherent Viking desire to jump off dangerously high objects, and he and Elsa had remained with Hiccup, and more dragons than Stoick at least had been prepared for, at the academy. All of the hatchlings were flying now, and growing rapidly, particularly in the case of the Nightmares who had started off barely larger than the Nadders but had now solidly outstripped them.

The sun was warm enough that nobody seemed to care about their wet clothes, and Astrid at least was more busy mocking Snotlout for the fish that he had speared on one horn of his helmet, while he was attempting to claim that it was deliberately and quite obviously lying. Hookfang ate the fish anyway, of course.

“So,” said Snotlout, as they all arranged themselves on the bench around Hiccup, dislodging a couple of hatchlings in the process and getting squeaked at for it. “Has anyone lifted that log of Hookfang’s yet?”

“You do appreciate that being a dragon confers him a _slight_ advantage in this, right?” said Fishlegs.

Hiccup shuffled his chair round to face his friends a little more clearly. Behind him, his father and Gobber were deep in discussion of something to do with fishing, which Hiccup had listened to for just about long enough to ascertain that things were doing well before ignoring the rest of the conversation. In the academy, Spitelout and some of his friends were taking turns to try to heft the log out of its cradle, and getting absolutely nowhere.

“Not yet,” he said. “Say, Fishlegs, if they aren’t done by the time the sun starts to set, how about we get Meatlug to show them how it’s done?”

“They’ll probably just start to team up if they can’t get it by themselves,” Astrid pointed out. She started loosening her hair, unpicking bits of seaweed as she went.

“Eh, this is Vikings we’re talking about.”

Below them, there was a strained grunt of exertion, quickly followed by shouts of encouragement, as Burplout tried his hand – or, more accurately, his shoulders – at lifting the log. They quickly segued into groans of disappointment as he, in turn, failed to have any success.

“I think they might have gone a little overboard on the log this year,” said Fishlegs.

Overboard was less of a risk for Vikings than a strategy, but even so there was not a lot of luck going around this year. Even Silent Sven, who regularly won strength events, had seen no success.

One of the Nadder hatchlings settled on the arm of Hiccup’s chair, and he scratched it behind the ears, feeling it chuff as it leant into his touch and half-closed its eyes. It had been a relief to see both Stormfly and the female Nightmare – who was still Girl Hookfang, according to Snotlout, the female Nightmare to the rest of them, and would probably remain as such until they actually found her a rider as well – recover from what had happened because of the Whispering Deaths, but sometimes it still ached to know that there should have been four, not three.

“It’ll be fine,” said Snotlout. He waved to the academy, still dripping water as he did so. “Look, my father’s up next.”

Astrid rolled her eyes but did not say anything; perhaps she did not feel it necessary when Spitelout’s only success in the Games this year was in the toga hönk, the seated tug-of-war at which Vikings excelled and which never seemed to have caught on in more southerly, less ocean-obsessed cultures.

Below them, Spitelout spat on his hands, swapped a few jokes with his fellows, and got his shoulders slapped a few times as he made his way over to the log. Snotlout sat forward in his seat with excitement written on his features. Hiccup, on the other hand, suspected that he knew how this was going to end, and sighed as Spitelout stooped beneath the log so that it was across his shoulders, took and tested his grip on the ropes, and then with a roar of effort attempted to push upwards and get the tree out of its cradle.

There were bellows of approval and encouragement, to which Snotlout apparently could not resist adding a shout of, “Spitelout! Spitelout! Oi, oi, oi!” such that Astrid, in front of him, grimaced. To Spitelout’s credit, the tree quivered in place, but finally Spitelout gave up and slumped down again, red-faced and panting. Those gathered around looked over hopefully to Gothi, who was sitting on a chair where she could clearly see one end of the tree in its cradle, but she shook her head and another round of groans ran through them.

Snotlout’s face fell, and despite all of the previous years Hiccup actually felt bad for him. “Don’t worry. Hookfang’s just stronger than any human could be,” he said. Snotlout growled something indistinct, which was enough to put paid to any goodwill that Hiccup might have been harbouring.

“Stoick!”

Spitelout had his hands cupped around his mouth and a towel flung over one shoulder, standing in the middle of the academy and shouting even over the noise.

“Come and join us!”

“You look to be having fun enough, Spitelout,” Stoick called back.

“Aw, come on, Stoick!” There were various shouts of agreement, both from inside the academy and around it, which rather spoke to the barrels of mead that had been cracked open in preparation for the celebration that evening. Stoick laughed, but he was looking less comfortable and shifted in his chair. “We’ve got to have one Haddock in the Games, surely!”

Technically speaking, Stoick had not taken part in the Games since he had become chief, and since that had been four years before Hiccup was born there had been quite a long gap indeed without a Haddock taking part. Only the chanting was starting up again, but this time it was Stoick’s name, rather more drunkenly than Elsa’s name the day before or any of the other names or times that it had happened over the course of the Games.

Hiccup reached for his whistle, knowing that would cut through any amount of shouting, but just before his hand closed around it he saw the _look_ , the glitter in his father’s eye and the way that he pursed his lips behind the moustache.

Everyone else in the village had at least the option to take part. Stoick had lost that when he became chief, and there was no-one else to oversee events for him.

“Go on, Dad,” he said, more quietly. Stoick looked round, surprise written on his features, and Hiccup smiled. “You’ve got me overseeing, remember?”

For a moment longer, Stoick hesitated, then he reached up and unfastened his great fur cloak, to howls of approval from around the academy as it sank in. He left it draped across the chair as he stood up, with a small gesture of his hand for Hiccup to take his place, and nodded down at them. “All right, Spitelout. Save a space for me.”

Spitelout cheered, punching the air with both fists and grabbing Burplout to crash their helmets together again. It was a good thing that Viking skulls were more reliable than Viking houses. Taking off his helmet as well, and setting it on the arm of the chair, Stoick looked meaningfully at Hiccup. It was more than clear enough, and Hiccup nodded.

There were a fair number of people looking to clap Stiock on the shoulder or shake his hand before he even made it to the steps down to the academy. Once the attention was well away from the central area, Hiccup eased himself across into the larger chair, nudging aside the cloak to make sure that he did not sit on it.

“This should be good,” said Astrid. It took Hiccup’s brain a moment to catch up and realise that she sound as if she meant it sincerely this time. He looked at her with raised eyebrows, but she just shrugged and gave him and inscrutable smile.

Below them, Stoick emerged into the academy to another round of cheers and shoulder-slapping, this time with Spitelout at the head of it. Spitelout said something and waved to the log, and Stoick laughed. There was another brief exchange, this one with more gesturing, and then with a shake of his head Stoick stepped over to the frame upon which the other men had draped their shirts and tunics.

Hiccup realised where this was going at about the point that Stoick unbuckled his belt, and put his face in his hands. Beside him, Gobber proved himself absolutely unhelpful by cackling with laughter. By the time that Hiccup dared to peek again, Stoick had taken off his scalemail as well, and to judge by the waving and pointing going on was now arguing with Spitelout about whether the tunic he wore underneath had to go as well.

“I could blow the whistle on this,” he said to Gobber. “There’s nothing in the rules which says you have to be shirtless.”

“I’d think some of the women would complain if there were,” said Gobber. “Bertha for one.”

Big-Boobied Bertha could carry a wild boar under one arm and put an axe through an oak plank in one blow, but after hearing a few of her rants on the subject of women’s underwear Hiccup had become uncomfortably aware of the structural issues involved in the whole matter.

“Thank you. That really helps my frame of mind right now.”

Absolutely unabashed, Gobber picked his teeth with his hook, and paused to examine the results. Hiccup sighed.

There was another round of cheering when Stoick finally stripped off his tunic and held up his hands as if in a show of surrender. Even with his beard doing its best to cover his chest, there was still enough back and shoulder on show for Hiccup to sit back in the chair and consider sliding out of it altogether. The distance around Stoick’s wrist was probably as big as that around Hiccup’s neck.

Stoick chalked up his hands as some of the other men had chosen to do, and walked over to the log. If he didn’t lift it, Hiccup supposed, it would make for a good tale anyway, the Chief coming down to participate in the Thawfest Games again. And Hookfang would have a feather in his metaphorical cap. Spitelout and some of the others gathered in as Stoick squared up to the log, pointing at the rope and probably making contributions of rather questionable helpfulness about how he should grip it.

“Hey, Hiccup,” said Ruffnut.

He looked over wearily. “Yes?”

“Can we have academy meetings at your house?” She had not looked round from the unfolding debacle beneath them as she spoke.

“What?”

“And – totally unrelated –” she gave him the briefest of glances before looking back down, “does your father take his shirt off often?”

It took a moment. Hiccup looked from Ruffnut’s impressed expression, down to his father currently establishing his grip on the ropes and shifting his shoulders to get the best position beneath the log, and spluttered something incoherent. When his mouth failed to come up with anything, he fell back on the old Viking staples, grabbed his cane from here it was leaning alongside the smaller chair – having discovered it made a good ringing sound when clanged against the dome of the academy, he had bought it with him to the last two days of the Games – and swatted at Ruffnut’s helmet with it.

It connected with a solid clang, and Ruffnut yelped. Hiccup was just winding up for a second blow, depending on what came out of her mouth next, and with one look at his glare she shuffled out of range.

“What?” she protested. “Oh, come on. He’s _stacked_.”

“Ooh, ooh!” said Tuffnut, leaning forwards. “That sounded good. Hit me on the head.”

He opted to ignore the less imminent of the concerns. “Don’t use that word about my father.”

“Astrid? Elsa? You’ve got to agree with me on this one.”

Ruffnut poked Astrid in the back with her foot, whereupon Astrid calmly took hold of her ankle and twisted it sideways, sending Ruffnut off the bench with another yell. An arm emerged from behind the bench and pointed in Hiccup’s vague direction.

“I stand by my comment,” said a slightly muffled voice.

“Come on, in the face. I can take it.”

Ruffnut half-emerged from beneath the bench, looking down to Astrid and them upwards to Elsa. “Guys?”

“Not my type,” said Elsa. If she was trying to hide her smile, she was doing terribly at it. It was impressive that in three words she could say so much, make Hiccup want to scrub entire areas of his brain clean, and at the same time leave him wondering leave him wondering where in Frigg’s name she managed to pick up phrases like that.

For a moment, Astrid looked as if she was going to say something, but Hiccup shot her a look that was one part desperation and one part annoyance. Throwing up her hands, she turned back as Stoick finally put his strength to bear against the log. There was a slow-building, wordless wave of sound coming from around the academy as Stoick pulled the ropes taut, pressing the log down into his shoulders and then, infinitesimally slowly, straightened his legs.

It looked as if it was not going to work. Then, somehow, the wood of the huge log creaked and shifted, and Stoick lifted it from its cradle, visibly, clear space between the log and its supports, until he locked his knees and took the whole weight, a good six inches clear and holding.

If there had been cheering before, there was no word for the tumult that followed. It was ear-splitting, and Hiccup tried to whoop as well but could not even hear himself among the crowds. Astrid was on her feet, hands cupped around her mouth, Ruffnut was jumping up and down on her bench, and everywhere that he looked peoples’ mouths were open but he could not even tell which of them was taking which part in the tumult.

Finally, Stoick’s knees buckled again, and with an almighty crash he let the log fall into its cradle. Within seconds he was being pulled over by the others, congratulated and embraced, and Hiccup was clapping as much as anyone else from around them. Even from here he could see the raw joy on his father’s face, that after nearly twenty years he had been able to join his men, his shield-brothers, his _friends_ in their competition and their games.

And it was worth an oversized chair and a hoarse voice from shouting, so much so that Hiccup wondered how he could ever have feared achieving nothing at all by doing this.

 

 

 

 

 

“Red sky,” said Astrid, joining him on the promontory overlooking the glittering navy of the sea. “Think we’ll get another good day tomorrow?”

She sat down next to him, on the grass and clover and daisies that looked to be thriving despite the interruption of having the Thawfest Games taking place there for the first time this year. The academy sat below them, empty now but somehow still ringing with laughter, and the sun was fast dipping below the horizon.

“Maybe,” said Hiccup. He leant back on his hands, letting the cool sea air wash over him. “Doesn’t matter so much now the Games are over. People have got their blood pumping for the spring, they’re raring to go.”

Astrid was wrapped up in a cloak again, changed back into her normal clothes but with her hair loose and not quite dry. It was going slightly bushy with seawater, which he had never seen before, and an urge rose in him to run his fingers through it. Coughing, he caught his treacherous hand before it could do any such thing.

“You had a good year,” he said. “The most wins yet?”

“In number of events,” she replied. She tucked her knees up beneath her, leaning on one hand and picking a daisy with the other. “In percentages... not so great.”

“Did you win _every_ event when we were ten?” All of the years of losing tended to blur into one after a while, and that was even when he wasn’t actively trying to push the memories out of his mind.

Astrid chuckled. “Fishlegs beat me in the arm wrestling.”

“Oh yeah, that was the year Snotlout had a broken wrist.” The memories started trickling back then, Snotlout in a cast and scowling as he tried to arm-wrestle with his off hand and failed miserably. Hiccup, who was always using his off hand, had found a certain sense of pleasure in beating Snotlout in a Thawfest event for the only time in seven years. “I can’t believe you remember that. No, actually, I can believe you remember that. How long did you hold that grudge?”

“I got Adelaide to put stinging nettles in his bed.”

“Oh, to be cool in the eyes of small children...”

“Hey!” Astrid punched him in the arm. “You are cool nowadays, remember? You ride a _Night Fury_.”

He looked over at Toothless, who was currently stretched out in what remained of the sunlight. “I also get pushed around by a Night Fury, but that may be neither here nor there.”

Astrid’s hair was hanging down over her right shoulder, even her fringe tousled. Before he could stop himself, Hiccup reached out to push it back for her, and only stuttered to a halt when his fingers were already slipping into the waves of hair.

“Sorry,” he said, frozen in place.

Half-frowning, Astrid flicked her eyes from his face to his hand, then tilted her head so that more of her hair slipped through his fingers. “Is there something wrong with my hair?”

“No! No,” he pushed her hair over her shoulder as he had been intending to do, even if it didn’t make him feel that much less weird, and pulled his hand back. “It just looked... different. The salt, I guess.”

“Yeah, this,” said Astrid, pointing to her hair, “is why it stays braided.” She smiled, expression softening. “You did great, Hiccup. I know you were worried about it.”

“Wha- what makes you think I was worried?”

“Oh, so I was imagining the time that you put your shirt on backwards?”

That had not been his most impressive day, and it had honestly been a good thing that Astrid had been up early to scope out the wind in preparation for the longbow archery. Hiccup groaned, and Astrid laughed before reaching over to – pointedly, he suspected – push a lock of hair back behind his ear.

“You need a haircut, though,” she said. “Unless you’re going to go for long enough to braid this time.”

“Yeah, I might manage that by the time I’m about Gothi’s age.” He liked the way that her fingers lingered on his cheek. It made his heart feel lighter in his chest, even as it made him unbearably nervous, so sure that he was going to do something that would mess this up again that he barely trusted himself to speak.

“You did well,” said Astrid again, more quietly.

It was probably a foolish thing to get so nervous about. The Thaw Festival Games did not involve anyone from outside Berk; there were no treaties or alliances reliant on them; they did not impact farming or fishing or, really, anything important. But on the other hand they were _desperately_ important, a reminder that summer would come again, even if its stay on Berk was always brief and rather tepid. The only time that Hiccup knew of that there had not been a Thawfest Games had been the year of Alvin’s treachery – and his mother had found that significant enough to record in the journals which she usually filled only with dragon movements.

If it hadn’t worked, it would have devastated people. And that could be as bad as hunger on an island like Berk.

Shifting her weight, Astrid leant in, her hand sliding down to cup his jaw and eyes fluttering closed. He leant in for the kiss, ignoring Stormfly’s shriek, or commentary, or whatever it was, from behind them. Astrid’s breath was warm on his cheek, and he could just feel her lips when she was thrown into him, far too hard for it to be deliberate, and they were both knocked back onto the ground.

Hiccup ended up spread-eagled on his back, Astrid’s knee in his stomach and her hair in his face, and he spat out a mouthful of it as he looked round to see Toothless bounding over to greet Stormfly, tail whipping back and forth.

“Thank you!” he shouted after the Night Fury. He was summarily ignored.

“Well,” Astrid said, pushing her hair back out of her face. She sat up, mercifully beside Hiccup rather than on top of him, and grinned. “Wasn’t expecting that. And I think Stormfly is trying to tell me that she wants to get home to the hatchlings.”

She bent down and pressed a kiss to his lips, firm and tender both at once, and Hiccup did not have time to reciprocate before Astrid pushed to her feet, ran over to Stormfly, and swung herself onto the Nadder’s back in one fluid motion. Hiccup propped himself onto one elbow and waved as she took off, bright against the deepening purple of the sky.

Toothless murred, bounding back over and sitting at Hiccup’s feet. His flaps were perked up, expression optimistic.

“Oh, you think you’re being helpful? Or cute, maybe? Or thinking at all,” added Hiccup at a mutter. He sat up and reached out a hand for Toothless to press his nose against. Even now it was a rush every time he felt that contact, as if he was only half-full without Toothless there to be the rest of him, and he wondered if he would ever know if Toothless felt the same.

He ran a hand over Toothless’s forehead, leaning forwards so that he could feel Toothless’s breath on his face, see the finest detail in his eyes. It was like looking at the stars; no matter how much Hiccup thought he had seen there, there was always something more to find.

“How do you think it went, bud? Think I might actually be able to run Thawfest one of these days?”

Toothless chirped.

“Thanks, bud,” said Hiccup, chuckling. He rubbed his cheek against Toothless’s for a moment, then got to his feet. “You don’t know how much that means to me. Now come on, we should get back to the village.”

Where, finally, he might just have chosen the word _belonged_ instead of the word _lived_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so another installment comes to an end! The series isn't over, folks, and ~~depending on what I can get polished up in the next week, we're either heading into the fic which draws more from _Frozen_ , or there will be a one-shot which goes between this fic and that one~~ the one-shot is still in progress, but [the story is heading on to Arendelle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8809471).
> 
> I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been with me for this fic, be they subscribers, commenters, readers, or my continually amazing beta reader ashleybenlove. It's now been more than a year since I started posting this fic, longer since I started writing it, and at first I was not even sure that I had an audience. So it's amazing to see or hear from you guys.
> 
> The enormous log in this chapter was inspired by the act of [Hafþór Bjornsson](http://www.ibtimes.com/pulse/watch-game-thrones-hafthor-bjornsson-break-1000-year-old-viking-record-lift-1400-1805624), in breaking the record of Orm Storolfsson the Strong from the Icelandic Sagas. In both cases, the log they carried weighed over 1,400lbs. The log I pictured for this scene was shorter and thicker in diameter, but that's where the inspiration came from.


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